This is a guest post by Peter Rouzaud. Peter recently started reading this blog, and then later discovered that he and I live in the same town! So we met for coffee and he shared with me some of his articles he has written. Below is one of these articles.Peter has also written a book called Finding Perfect Peace
Have you ever seen the movie “Harvey“?
It’s a great old movie, staring Jimmy Stewart. Stewart plays Elwood P. Dowd, an eccentric whose good friend is a seven-foot rabbit that talks. The only problem is that Dowd is the only one that can see or hear his friend Harvey. Understandably, this creates lots of problems for Dowd.
Now just imagine if this were possible: Imagine that you had a friend that no one could see, no one else could hear, yet whom you could see and hear perfectly. How would this make you feel? Among other feelings, I think it would make you feel special. But you would certainly have trouble communicating to others who and what your friend was.
This, I think, is a great example of ‘faith in Christ.’ No matter what I say about Him. No matter how passionate I am in my explanations, it is impossible for me to adequately describe who Jesus is to me. I may say to you, “Jesus told me something today’. Or, “Jesus is helping me in this way today.” Or, “Jesus did something very great in my life today.”
If you grew up in the church, you might understand what I mean. On the other hand, you might look at me as if I said that Harvey the seven-foot rabbit did and said all these things.
Each of us have experiences with Jesus that make sense to us, but which are difficult, if not impossible, to explain to other people. But this does not mean our experience with Jesus is a figment of our imagination.
Spiritual Experiences and the Christian
Before I go on, let me say that I am not advocating or promoting purely unsubstantiated, subjective experiences. Every religion has it’s esoteric experiences. Voodoo has its emotional trances. Mormonism has its ‘burning in the bosom.’ Pentecostalism has its tongues and prophetic utterances. All these use such experiences to claim legitimacy and to validate the “faithful.” But this is not what I am talking about.
Neither am I saying that ‘all personal experiences are somehow OK and right for the individual and we should not judge others experiences; because they are just as legitimate as our own.’
No, what I am saying is that God can give you an experience that is unique to you, and He can give me an experience that is unique to me. And just as I have to trust my experience, you have to trust your own! And just as neither one of us can fully understand or share the experience of the other, so also, neither one of us can directly challenge or invalidate the experience of the other.
A Validation of Your Experience with God
Here are some thoughts which validate your unique experience with God:
- It’s is impossible for God to lie (Num 23:19)
- God said that if you seek Him with your ‘whole’ heart you would find Him (Prov. 2:1-10)
- Jesus said that God wants us to worship Him is Spirit and in truth (John 4:24)
- The apostle John said that the Spirit of God would lead us into all truth (1 John 2:27 )
- Jesus said that , ‘all that came to Him, he would not cast us out (John 6:37)
- Jesus said that he would actually live inside us by his Spirit (John 14:16-17)
Essentially, all religion is subjective; none of it can be scientifically proven to be genuine.
This is not to say that all religion is valid; only that God is the one that judges its validity. But aside from its subjective nature, pure religion must have its source from God. And if the source is from God, I don’t have any control over your experience. I may have an opinion about it, but ultimately, your experience is between you and God.
Experience is a part of Relationship
God wants a relationship with his children (us humans). But just as with any relationship, there are conditions for how that relationship begins and continues.
But a problem arises among Christians when I begin to think that the conditions and experiences of my relationship with God are normative for all other children of God. We get into trouble if I think that my relationship with God is what every other relationship with God should look like.
But this expectation does not match any other relationship in life. While there are similarities in all marriages, no marriage relationship began or continued to develop like any other marriage relationship. Every marriage is unique. In the same way, While there may be some similarities in all parent-child relationships, no parent-child relationship progressed or grew like any other parent-child relationship.
So if my marriage looks nothing like your marriage, do I have any right to say that you are not, in fact, married? No!
But this is what we sometimes to as Christians.
I look at how I became a child of God and if your story of how you became a child of God does not match up with mine, I might be tempted to think that you are not, in fact, a child of God at all! Or if I have certain experiences in my relationship with Jesus, but you don’t share those experiences at all, I might be tempted to think you don’t have a relationship with Jesus. In both cases, you might think the same thing about me. And if we get to arguing about this, it’s going to cause divisions and problems.
Thankfully, God has it all figured out
One thing we can be sure of, and this is what we must hold to, is that God knows every man intimately, and He promised to reveal Himself to any man who wants to know Him.
So it matters little what I think of your experience with God. Nor does it matter what you think of my experience. What matters is what God sees deep down in our heart.
The tricky part, however, is what we see from Elwood P. Dowd. Though his belief in Harvey made him different, I am certain that it is not God’s intent just to make us different from the world. His intent is more complicated than that.
I have found that my relationship with God does make me different, but there is the huge distinction. Harvey made Dowd different according to Dowd’s own propensities, but Jesus makes each of us different according to God’s propensities and His character. This is never easy, and there is a strong part of me that continually fights this change. But change I do, not just outwardly, but deep inside.
And, by the way, this is how I know that my relationship with my “invisible friend” is genuine: my propensities change into something I never wanted or imagined.
To try to convince anyone of this subjective experience is futile, and a waste of time. The fact is, God does a better job, we only need to ask Him to reveal Himself to us, and if our heart is honest, He will.
Are you uncomfortable with comparing your relationship with Jesus to Dowd’s relationship with an invisible, talking rabbit? Explain why in the comment section below.
Or maybe it gives you comfort to know that your relationship with Jesus has been tailor-made to fit you and your personality, and to bring you into a deeper relationship with God, so that what you experience with God will not ever be duplicated or matched by any other person you encounter? Maybe this gives you the freedom to stop trying to “measure up” to the experiences of others.
if we think/expect that someone else should experience God the same as us otherwise they are wrong – we are busy with religion!
Excellent point. So true
So often the church has a “cookie cutter” mentality. Meaning that everyone should look, talk and act the same and have the same experiences with God. The problem is if you either don’t have certain experiences or you have different experiences or you experience the same thing but in a different way, you are made to feel less than. Even if it’s your own internal voice saying it, you still feel like something is missing because it didn’t/doesn’t happen to you. This article was refreshing. It releases a load off to know that what I experience is unique to me and just because I do something differently or I don’t experience something, it doesn’t mean I am weird or that I’m not really a Christian. It means I have a unique relationship with God. And that is an encouraging thought.
Right. We think the way we know God (and what we know about Him) is exactly the same way it should be for everyone. But no relationship is like that.
“Thankfully, God has it all figured out”. ?
We also interpret our experience with God through what we think He thinks of us……………so to find out who you are in Christ changes this relationship interpretation.
Does this mean holy laughter, slaying in the spirit, gold fillings and all the rest just might not be crazy?
As I said in the , “This is not to say that all religion is valid; only that God is the one that judges its validity. But aside from its subjective nature, pure religion must have its source from God.”
I must confess, since I was converted, I believed all kinds of things that have since dropped off me like old skin cells going back to dust. So my life of faith is continually being renewed.
I’m converted hippy from the sixties, naturally I carried a lot of my philosophies into my new found faith. Thank goodness, God is more patient than many of my Christian brothers. He patiently showed me what to give up, then what to put on (Rom.13.14). In contrast, religion requires a quick fix.
I definitely have opinions about the things you mentioned, however, it’s not my business to attempt to grow someone quicker than the Holy Spirit is working in that person. The bottom line; God will grow a person… eventually. The only things required, is humility towards God, and a sincere heart. God takes care of the rest.
But be aware, God will sometimes use a Jackass to talk to you….That’s where the “humility” part comes in.
I see the world differently than most people, so I would expect no one else to see God in the same way I do.
It is great you recognize this. So many of us lean toward conformity, and think others should do the same.
I absolutely think each of us has a unique relationship. Stopped comparing long ago.
Good! I think I still fall into the comparison trap from time to time.
I’ve been thinking all this for a good while now – thanks Jeremy for putting it into words!
And I also noticed that you didn’t put in your list of ‘validating thoughts’ that whatever God feels like or does with us, it has to jibe with Scripture. God isn’t restricted like that; thanks for not putting it in the list! The problem of course with such lists is that people would use them as like lists of rules! If your experience of God doesn’t jibe with this list, then it’s not of God.
Of course, I realise that this is the point of your article – that cookie-cutter experiences are not necessary – and I also note that many of your other respondents have made this point too. God is so much bigger than our limited thoughts and doctrines!
We are a Peculiar People; some of us a bit more peculiar than others. I have come to try to celebrate/accept my God-given peculiarities, also trying not to fall into the trap of thinking this somehow makes me more cool than those “normal” people. God is so utterly amazing, why would we NOT be?
Right. We should celebrate our diversity and peculiarity, rather than try to make clones out of each other…
Good post, Peter. I remember a fellow we knew many years ago. He was not a Christian and proud of it. We had not seen him for awhile and he moved near us. Much to our surprise, he told us that he had been “saved” and was going to church a couple of times a week. A few months later, however, he called and was in great distress. The church he was attending was insisting that he could not be a real Christian because he did not speak in tongues.
Even though I explained that many churches do not believe that way, the next time we talked he told us he had “chucked the religion thing.” In his words, “no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t do the tongues thing.” We no longer live near each other, but the last we heard he still wants nothing to do with God or religion, all because he “couldn’t do the tongues thing.”
This is a heart breaking story. I once heard in an Andy Stanley sermon, “if your religion doesn’t make you feel free, something is wrong” (this not exactly verbatim)
After all, Jesus did say that the truth is supposed to do just that, ‘set us free’. So where is the problem? I’m sure the problem of feeling bound, can be attributed to many things. However, I think a general rule is, we become invested in the wrong place. Suddenly we are entangled in all kinds of STUFF! Some not so healthy. The first test of my wife and my faiths, were months after our conversion. Our pastor, who meant so much to us, got to know the leader of an international Christian cult. He joined this group and took most of the church with him. My wife and I, without any counsel came to the conclusion that we were going to simply follow Jesus without all that baggage that cult offered. So we wandered alone for about a year.
I’ve often thought, “how’d we survive the breakup of the church, and the (apparent) fall of our beloved pastor?” I think it was because we invested, not with the one, of the many, ‘brokers’ of the (company) but was actually invested with the Kingdom of God. Brokers come and go, but our investment remained secure.
To any who might know a similar situation as Sam describes, here are some ideas. First remember, we are all ‘in process’. The final chapter in our present lives have not been written. Keep praying for those you love!
Second: Someone once said, ‘the human conscience is immune to coercion’. All men spirits rebel against all but the most subtle manipulation (which humans are incapable). Always just love people, never try to control them; always be willing to help, then…….
Third, they will be open to that one person who has demonstrated patience and love for them. If the Holy Spirit guides you to send them a note, or a link to some helpful thing dealing with genuine faith, be ready to offer that.
Any other ideas on this?
Are we going back to the beginning of the bible when animals and man lived as one and did not eat meat. I am a vegetarian because I don’t believe that animals should be killed for us in ref to the news to me gods to dack to his teachings.