SCRIPTURE: HOW DO WE EXPERIENCE GOD?

SCRIPTURE: HOW DO WE EXPERIENCE GOD?

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God is able to speak to us in any way He wants to speak. I have heard several testimonies of how God broke through to someone on a frightful drug high. However, there is nothing in Scripture that suggests that drugs will facilitate an experience of God. God even spoke to the wayward prophet Balaam through his donkey. However, God never suggests that we should try to encounter the voice of God through donkeys. Instead, there is only one way that He authorizes His blessings, and that is through Scripture:

∑       May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence. (2 Peter 1:2-3 ESV)

It is through the knowledge of God contained in the Scriptures that the Spirit works all His spiritual blessings, starting with salvation:

∑       For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. (Romans 1:16; 1 Peter 1:23; James 1:18)

However, it is this very Gospel that the Church has ignored and even rejected to its shame and destitution. Much of the Church thinks well of itself, but it is “wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17), convinced that it knows better than the Word of God. We pursue our comforts and pleasures, but have little heart for the things of God, the things that He has highlighted in the Scriptures:

∑       Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me. (John 14:23-24)

Israel’s well-being had depended upon one question – Would they obey or disobey the entire Word of the Lord?

∑        “And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you. You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you.” (Deuteronomy 4:1-2; 12:32)

The Word alone must be the pre-eminent (2 Corinthians 10:4-5) “sword of the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:17). The Word of God is the bridge between God and His people. To tamper with this bridge would bring serious consequences (Deuteronomy 13:1-5; 18:20-22). Obedience to God’s Word was the measure of Israel’s love of Her God. Obedience to it would also be the way of blessing, as God promised Joshua:

∑        “Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” (Joshua 1:7-8) 

Blessing is a matter of abiding in the Words of God and meditating upon it day and night (Psalm 1); not on clearing minds, but filling them with the wisdom of God (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). It also had to be according to the Word that Israel would consult God:

∑       And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. (Isaiah 8:19-20)

God’s truth stood above all other forms of truth. God confronted Israel with numerous trials to teach them that they could not violate God’s Words in any way:

∑        “The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. (Deuteronomy 8:1-3; Matthew 4:4)

However, our affluent West has largely failed God’s test. They see little need to abide in God’s Word. Instead, they abide in yoga, mystical practices, self-help books, and psychotropic medications. They seek relief and spiritual transformation but disdain the Scriptures. However, transformation is the very thing that God offers through His Word.

Moses’ countenance had been transformed as he listened to the Words of God on Mt. Sinai:

∑       When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. (Exodus 34:29)

Israel didn’t ask Moses how they too could have such a mountain-top experience; nor did Moses tell them. Instead, he gave them what they needed – the Words of God. We too need the Words of God to become Christ-like:

∑       Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

∑       And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord [through Scripture – 2 Cor. 4:3-6], are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

These teachings are strange to modern ears, which are lessoning to teachers who offer contemplative techniques of self-transformation as if the answer is found within us. Others teach a variety of methods to experience God, the last Person we want to experience once we have rejected His Word, the knowledge of God:

∑       Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. (Colossians 3:9-10; Ephesians 4:23-24)

Jesus never taught mystical self-improvement techniques. Instead, He poured the Word of God into His disciples:

∑       “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.” (John 15)

Oddly, we are sanctified – made holy – by the truth not by a loving relationship or a mountain-top experience. Therefore, Jesus prayed:

∑       “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” (John 17:17-19)

∑       “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them." (John 17:26 NIV)

Surprisingly, it is through the knowledge of God that we come to experience more of the love of God.

The Word of God also judges us. Jesus explained that He would not judge us. Instead, the Word would do the judging:

∑       If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. (John 12:47-48)

How does a mere Word judge? By the Spirit, it penetrates and examines us (Hebrews 4:12). In a sense, we all have the truths of God within us (Romans 2:14-16). This Word will either draw us to the Source of this Light or cause us to flee into darkness (John 3:19-20), because we cannot stand the scrutiny and exposure of the Light of the Word. We will either revel in the Light of truth, or we will suppress it (Romans 1:18) and flee from it, thereby condemning us to dwell in darkness. Consequently, we are judging ourselves by our reaction to the Word.

There is only one way to love God. I can love my wife by doing the dishes, rubbing her back, and by listening to her. However, I can only love God by listening to Him. Consequently, to please God, to enjoy Him, and to receive His blessings, our lives have to be Word-centered.