My experience is not what makes redemption real— redemption is
reality. Redemption has no real meaning for me until it is worked out
through my conscious life. When I am born again, the Spirit of God takes
me beyond myself and my experiences, and identifies me with Jesus
Christ. If I am left only with my personal experiences, I am left with
something not produced by redemption. But experiences produced by
redemption prove themselves by leading me beyond myself, to the point of
no longer paying any attention to experiences as the basis of reality.
Instead, I see that only the reality itself produced the experiences. My
experiences are not worth anything unless they keep me at the Source of
truth— Jesus Christ.
If you try to hold back the Holy Spirit within you, with the desire
of producing more inner spiritual experiences, you will find that He
will break the hold and take you again to the historic Christ. Never
support an experience which does not have God as its Source and faith in
God as its result. If you do, your experience is anti-Christian, no
matter what visions or insights you may have had. Is Jesus Christ Lord
of your experiences, or do you place your experiences above Him? Is any
experience dearer to you than your Lord? You must allow Him to be Lord
over you, and pay no attention to any experience over which He is not
Lord. Then there will come a time when God will make you impatient with
your own experience, and you can truthfully say, “I do not care what I
experience— I am sure of Him!”
Be relentless and hard on yourself if you are in the habit of talking
about the experiences you have had. Faith based on experience is not
faith; faith based on God’s revealed truth is the only faith there is.
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