Spiritual Growth

Experience and the Authority of Scripture

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A Facebook conversation yesterday discussed the problem of experiences in the Christian life and how those experiences must be made to conform to Scriptural authority. In other words, Scripture must determine our understanding of experiences.

Now I’m going to write something controversial: That previous sentence is not entirely accurate.

Certainly, Scripture must be a bedrock for understanding experiences, but there’s a weakness inherent in that fact: Us. Because we are human, our understanding is not always complete. While we may think we understand the depths of a Scriptural injunction, it may only be through experience that we can understand it more completely. And in understanding it more completely, our understanding may flip 180 degrees.

An example of how one apostle got his understanding of Scripture altered by experience:

The next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. And he became hungry and wanted something to eat, but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened and something like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to him: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” And the voice came to him again a second time, “What God has made clean, do not call common.” This happened three times, and the thing was taken up at once to heaven. Now while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision that he had seen might mean, behold, the men who were sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry for Simon’s house, stood at the gate and called out to ask whether Simon who was called Peter was lodging there. And while Peter was pondering the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them.”
—Acts 10:9-20 ESV

'Peter's Vision' by Doug JaquesPeter knew the Scriptures and was filled with the Holy Spirit. Then he experienced this vision.

Notice how Peter answers, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” He was responding using the Scriptures as he understood them and practiced them.

Notice too how God makes it clear that there is a deeper meaning to the Scriptures that Peter must understand. God uses an experience to alter and expand Peter’s understanding.

This led to a problem:

Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.”
—Acts 11:1-3 ESV

The circumcision party had the same understanding of the Scriptures that Peter had. They accused Peter based on that understanding.

Peter explained his experience of the vision and replied:

And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter; he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.’ As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?”
—Acts 11:11-17 ESV

Peter experienced a vision.

Peter experienced the Holy Spirit speaking to Him.

Peter experienced that same Holy Spirit falling on the Gentiles.

Peter had his understanding of the Scriptures altered by those experiences.

And so did others:

When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”
—Acts 11:18 ESV

Sometimes, experience expands our understanding of the Scriptures and alters everything.

Anyone who has had a loved one die will tell you the experience of death alters their understanding of the Scriptures. In fact, it is almost impossible for it not to.

Anyone who has been taught the Bible has had an experience in that very act of teaching and learning that will alter understanding. Raise your hand if you were instructed in a Scriptural truth that altered how you understood it. Does everyone have a hand up? You should.

Every day, our experiences modify our understanding of  the Scriptures. And sometimes those modifications flip everything.

And while those flips may be the work of God in our lives to deepen our understanding of Him and this wild life we live, sometimes the flips aren’t of God. Sometimes, we go off the path.

This is why we must also learn to live by the Spirit.

But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”–these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
—1 Corinthians 2:7-14 ESV

If we live by the Spirit with the Scriptures as our counsel, we will not fall into error. Indeed, our experiences will only serve to help us grow deeper in both.

When a Christian Feels Like an Imposter

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When everyone is worshiping on Sunday and seems to be “into” God, you stand with them.

But you’re not feeling the music.

You’re not feeling love for God or for others.

You instead feel alone and disconnected.

You wonder what is wrong with you.

You may even ask yourself, Am I an imposter?

Feeling as if you are faking your way through the Christian life is not unusual. In difficult times, when nothing seems to be going right, that sense can become overwhelming.

But are you really a phony with regard to your faith?

Hiding behind a maskTruth is, most Christians who struggle with feelings of being an imposter need to realize, generally, that people who fake their Christian devotion aren’t self-examining. Real imposters in the faith, those who may go to church and talk the talk but who aren’t truly born again, don’t pose questions of their motives because, for the most part, they simply don’t care. Theirs is not an attitude of wanting to fix their phoniness, so they abide it without worry.

Yes, sometimes God does break through in the life of someone who has been phoning in their faith for years or even decades, but I think that’s not the majority case.

Instead, I think the people who most struggle with feelings of being an imposter are genuine, born-again Christians who have run into some kind of spiritual barrier that has forced self-examination.

What are some causes for feelings of being an imposter?

1. Legalism—Whether imposed by a church or self-imposed, a mandated set of spiritual do’s and don’ts can lead that imposter self-accusation. Everyone else is doing this Christian life thing right, but you’re not making the grade, and you know it.

2. Listening to the Enemy when you should be ignoring him—Satan is real. And more than anything, discouragement is his tool for ruining believers. A discouraged Christian never reaches his or her full potential in Faith, which is what the Enemy wants. In addition, a discouraged Christian is an antiwitness.

3. Disconnection from other Christians—Sometimes, the people in the pews go through turnover. Suddenly, you don’t know who those new folks are, have no relationship with them, and your church just feels different. You find yourself increasingly distanced from the Christian connections you once had. You wonder if there’s something you’re doing wrong, which explains why everyone seems not to care about connecting with you.

4. Change—Your church changed it’s worship music style. The sanctuary was remodeled. You have a new pastor. Your closest friends at the church moved out of the area or switched to a different church. Everything feels different.

5. A new direction in your own life—If bridges are burning through no cause of your own, if everything you were doing feels as if it’s coming to an end, maybe God has a new direction for your life. Maybe it even means changing your church. In short, not all feelings of being an imposter must be negative. Perhaps God is opening a new vista for you or is getting ready to launch you in a new ministry opportunity.

And then there’s that final one:

6. Perhaps you’re not truly born again.

As noted above, that final one is less likely than you might assume when you feel as if you’re an imposter.

Here’s the curious thing, though: Whether you are a genuine imposter or just feeling like one, the solutions are the same:

1. Repent—God desires that all men and women repent of their sins. If you are not a genuine Christian, then you need to repent. If you are a genuine Christian and you’ve just succumbed to ignoring what God says positively about you as His son or daughter, then you need to repent. Even if #5 applies and God is using your feelings of being an imposter to take you in a new direction for His work, repentance is always the place to start. You can’t go wrong with repentance.

2. Humble yourself—Sometimes, feelings of being an imposter can make a person feel superior to others. You alone recognize that you’re a fake and everyone else is too dumb to see that. They’re all imposters too. Or so the self-deception goes. Don’t go there. If you’ve repented, allow yourself to be humbled. You’re dust and so is everyone else. Stop thinking that you’re any better or any worse than anyone else.

3. Accept grace—God offers grace to imposters, whether they are genuine imposters or just mired in the mistaken feelings of being one. Learning to accept God’s grace is key to ridding yourself of feelings of being an imposter. But it has to be learned. Ask God to help you improve in your ability to accept His grace.

4. Draw closer to Jesus—Every answer to every problem is found in Jesus. Really.

I want to expand that fourth solution.

My experience with people who feel as if they are imposters is that the majority are on the cusp of a deeper walk with the Lord. Allow Him to take you there. Deep calls to deep, and that feeling of being an imposter is often God’s way of saying that He has a more fulfilling relationship He wishes to pursue with you. He wants more of you for Himself and for His Kingdom’s purposes.

Because God doesn’t want us to be satisfied with the status quo. He doesn’t want us to be thrilled by mammon, but He wants us to be thrilled by what He values. Feelings of being an imposter are one means by which God can correct the course of your life to look more like His Son’s. In a way, that feeling of being an imposter is real because all of us are imposters if we’re not living in the fulness of life in Christ that He so desires for us.

So while feeling like an imposter IS something of a bad situation, it’s not a hopeless one. In fact, it most often signals the start of a wonderful new direction that God has always desired for you but which you were unable or unwilling to accept because you were not ready.

He has made everything beautiful in its time.
—Ecclesiastes 3:11a ESV

Making Sense of Confusing Christian Voices

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A reader wrote to ask a question I thought was important, so I want to post a response here.

The gist of that multipart question:

How do I make sense of the mishmash of voices/teachings/ideas/admonitions I hear in the Christian Church today? How can it all be reconciled? A respected Christian pastor on the radio says one thing, while a famous Christian author writes something different. Denominations don’t agree. How do I know who is right and who isn’t?

That’s a difficult question. What I share below is what I believe. It’s how I handle that same question, because each of us needs to find a way to deal with the flood of information that bombards us daily. Even Christian information. We live in strange times awash in more information and data in one day than most people used to encounter in a lifetime. Making sense of it all is a monumental task.

1. Recognize that each of us is on a journey of faith—and we have not yet arrived at journey’s end.

One thing that bothers me most about Western Christianity is our mania concerning incompleteness. If we were to read a novel that had many interesting ideas woven through the narrative but which lacked a final chapter, many of us would tear out our hair in frustration. The fact that many wonderful events occurred in the book or that we learned intriguing things along the way pales against the angst of not knowing if the hero vanquished his foe or if the heroine overcame her circumstances.

Your story and mine are not yet complete. The final chapter hasn’t been written, nor all the events played out. We’re still journeying through the narrative of our lives.

And that journey is being orchestrated by God Himself.

Since God is writing our story, since He is planning our journey, we can be at peace with incompleteness if we allow God to do His work in our lives.

One of the Scriptures that brings me great comfort when I want to rush toward what I think is the right destination in my journey is this:

He [God] has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
—Ecclesiastes 3:11

My timing is not His timing. Only His timing is perfect. What God has done is too wondrous for me to grasp, so full and rich as to be beyond me.

And I can be at peace with that, if I choose to be.

Paul puts it this way in the New Testament:

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
—1 Corinthians 13:12

What’s around the bend in the river? That conjecture drives some people to distraction and worry. In some cases, it even causes people to abandon the journey.

But the real answer to what’s around that bend? God. Which is why worrying is fruitless. God is there in the parts of the path we can’t see, so we are sheltered no matter where we are in the journey.

2. Recognize that each person is on a different part of the journey of faith.

Something in our cultural makeup assumes that everyone must be on our same faith journey and be just as far along as we are.Horizon meets road

Honestly, that’s just pride. And that pride manifests as judging people who don’t measure up.

Here’s a reality check: Every famous Christian you and I admire, every pastor, every teacher, every author, all of them are flawed. None are or were fully complete this side of heaven. Each was someplace along that pathway that defines the journey of faith, and the likelihood is that their stations along the way will not always align with ours.

Our problem is that we expect those waystations to align despite the fact that each of us is a unique individual with unique sins, a unique past, unique gifts, and a unique perspective on the journey. Our destination may be the same, but how we get there is unique to what God wants do through us for His glory.

When I encounter another Christian, the worst thing I can assume about him is that his journey has been identical to mine, that he’s gone just as far as I have, and that he’s standing alongside me on the path. When I do that, I completely mangle his story to fit mine. Or else I throw up my hands at his travel log of experiences and claim he’s on the wrong journey.

Again, that’s pride. It makes me the arbiter of all reality, places me at the center of the universe, and leaves God out of the business of managing other people’s journeys.

If you grew up in a loving home with a devoted father who loved you immensely, how weird would it be for some fellow believer to insist that you must have a problem with the fatherhood of God because everyone has a problem with their earthly fathers, and those problems taint our perspective of our heavenly one? How likely would it be that this insistent person had a problem with his own earthly father?

Yet this sort of thing is repeated daily a million times over on a million different scales within the Christian Church today. That insistent person made an assumption about your journey.

Now it may be that instead of a great earthly father, yours was a nightmare. If that’s the case, then this insistent person will seem like a breath of fresh air. Great! Thank God for that. But if not, then just realize that people are in different places on their journey. That seems so obvious, yet the confusion out there says we fail to understand that truth.

The greatest Christians we can cite were at one point lost. At one point they struggled with the lordship of Jesus in all aspects of life. At one point they got some doctrine wrong. People like Martin Luther, Charles Spurgeon, Amy Carmichael, Gladys Alward, Watchman Nee, A.W. Tozer, Corrie Ten Boom, C.S. Lewis, Jack Hayford, Chuck Swindoll, and Francis Chan were at some point wrong more often than right. But each learned and grew in God’s grace.

Can you imagine encountering Martin Luther as a young man today? He’d probably seem like a basketcase. But look how his journey unfolded!

How arrogant we can be when we judge by our standards rather than nurture by God’s!

3. Make peace with paradox, mystery, and the dim mirror, but never give up wanting to understand more.

One aspect of Western Christian I am increasingly willing to move off center stage is scientific rationalism. We in the West approach every part of life with the scrutiny and logic of Mr. Spock. Problem is, as any fan of Star Trek will tell you, Mr. Spock often missed the point, and instead those wacky, paradoxical humans saved the day.

We want to shoehorn our faith into systematic theologies and logic. We want God to conform to manmade standards. We hate thinking that Paul is right about the dim mirror. We want our faith to make sense at all times and in all places before all people.

But consider this: Jesus Christ is both fully man and fully God.

Or another: The infinite God of the universe dwells in finite believers.

Or another: You will live forever.

Mind blown? Well, it should be.

Our problem in North America 2011 is that we’ve stymied our willingness to wonder. And when you kill wonder and mystery, all that’s left is bitter argument.

It’s okay not to know it all. God is not going to slay us if we can’t resolve some of the paradoxical or mysterious aspects of the Christian faith. He’s not going to keep us out of heaven if we don’t understand the nuances of infralapsarianism. You and I can rest assured that even if we don’t fully get it, God does, and that’s just fine.

That said, God doesn’t want us to be mired 24/7/365  whimsically pondering how the stars speak forth praise. Sometimes, Mr. Spock’s logic saved the Enterprise from certain doom. Growing some head knowledge about our faith is just as needed as heart knowledge and a place for mystery, wonder, and awe.

So it’s okay if not everything you and I hear aligns. Again, our journeys are different and so are those of the people who speak to us. And sometimes, while two voices seem to be at irreconcilable odds, they may not be, especially as we gain a bit more wisdom down the path of our journey. It’s amazing what a little experience can do when it comes to making the seemingly impossible possible.

4. Get discernment by learning how to properly apply revelation from God.

This is the more nuts and bolts part of the post.

God speaks to us in the following ways:

Through the general revelation of His created world.

Through the special revelation of the Scriptures.

Through the personal and intimate revelation of His Holy Spirit indwelling us.

Where Christians go astray is when they downplay one of those three or punt one entirely. Yet all three are critical for proper discernment of truth. One will never contradict the other, and all three work together to reveal truth.

In Romans 1 we read that men are without excuse before God because of the revelation inherent in the created order. When we look at the world around us, it speaks of God.

That should blow our minds. That it doesn’t blow the minds of some Christians is one reason why people lose their ability to wonder. And wonder is an essential part of faith that keeps us from falling into easy arguments.

The Scriptures have been given to us to show the part of God’s story that can’t be fully explained by the created world. They are not only a far richer source of truth than the created world—and more obvious in their implications, too—but the Scriptures form the backbone of our practice of the Faith itself. They reveal who Jesus is and show us how we can know Him. The Bible is our essential equipping  tool:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
—2 Timothy 3:16-17

But while it is one thing to equip a person for ministry, it is quite another to direct him. This is why we have the Holy Spirit in us. The Holy Spirit is not only our seal of salvation, but He is the one who makes sense of what we know from the Bible in such a way as to apply it correctly. The Holy  Spirit’s revelation takes the general purpose instructions of the Bible and shows us how to apply them in specific circumstances not specifically addressed in the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit makes sense of the spiritual world for us and leads us in everything.

So, to be discerning, we must do the following:

Be observant of the natural world.

Study and know the Scriptures.

Learn to listen to and obey the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Most churches and denominations do one of those three well, are passable in a second, and tend to forget the third. We’re not allowed the “luxury” of not handling all three fully and properly, though.

Oddly enough, our failures to heed all three contribute to the host of conflicting voices in the Christian Church. When one teacher is talking about the Bible being the only genuine source of revelation and another teacher stresses we have to learn to listen to the Holy Spirit, it sounds like a clash. It’s not, though. It’s just men failing to live up to the entire calling of the Lord.

This lack tends to force us into piecemeal study of forms of revelation and how we should use them. That’s not optimal, but finding a church in North America that handles all revelation well is not easy, sad to say. It should be easy, but we Westerners tend to latch onto what appeals to us most and forget everything else. That failing explains in part the thousands of different Christian denominations out there. If we understand this, we can make peace with it, even if it’s not ideal.

5. Know that God loves you and will keep you.

I think the greatest fear in those who ask the questions that start this post is that God is somehow not good enough to protect them and keep them unto salvation and knowledge of Him.

But God does love you and me. This is what the Paul writes:

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
—Philippians 1:6

And this is what the Lord Jesus says to you from His own lips:

“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:20b

He will never leave us or forsake us. He is faithful when we aren’t. He loves us even when we see through a dim mirror and miss our turn on the path. He will see us through to the end.

Do we believe that? If we do, then we will not fear, even when the voices around us grow confusing.

I hope this helps.

Lastly, humility must permeate it all. If we recognize that we are dust (and others are too), it helps us put all of learning into perspective. Our teachers will often fail, but that’s okay because the riches of God are so vast that no one teacher will ever enlighten us. That’s God’s work, because He is not limited. Draw close to Him, and learn from His Son by the Holy Spirit, and your path will be made straight.