# She is in her sixties, ‘brought up’ in the church,
and religion has been an important part of her weekly diet. But
her ‘faith’ has not brought her a richer, fuller life. She ‘went
forward’ as a young person during an evangelistic crusade, but
she has never grown up spiritually…

# They’re an older couple, married over forty years,
and very faithful to their church. They go through the motions
of their devotions at home – reading their Bible in the morning,
then ‘fussing’ through the day. They go to church every Sunday,
and argue all the way home…

# Here’s a preacher, who’s still trying to minister
according to the theological insights he learned back in college
days. He rarely prepares a fresh sermon, and is even proud of
not having read a new theological book in three months. In fact,
his life is an escape from the harsh realities and hard questions
that might confront him if he faced them, but would threaten his
closed mind…

# Finally, a charismatic leader. He has proven gifts
of prophecy, teaching, healing, deliverance and evangelism. In
fact, he’s led hundreds to the Lord and into other ‘blessings’.
But he’s been engaged in an extra-marital affair for two years….

Each of these has ‘parked’ by a previous experience
of God. Sad…

Religious experiences, particularly those with a
high emotional content, are very complex. Protestants generally,
particularly Anglo-Saxons, are somewhat afraid of their emotions.
They have a ‘reserved’ approach to worship, and a somewhat rationalistic
approach to faith and doctrine. Very few could be accused of ‘being
drunk with new wine’! Religious experience is for them a private
matter. At the other extreme, for some Christians their religious
experiences are for constant public demonstration.

Now feelings are important, and experience is important.
And so is rationality. Friedrich Schleiermacher has reminded us
that we know God primarily through our experience; for him, a
‘passional’ experience of religion made more sense than a purely
intellectual one.

I doubt whether any great idea gets hold of us without
our feeling something. But feelings can fluctuate wildly, and
they must never be used to test our spiritual state!

But, that said, we must confess that with our new
openness to the Spirit many are experiencing some quite dramatic
encounters with the living Christ. What are we to make of it all?

In the passage we read together, 2 Cor. 12:1-10,
Paul describes his greatest ‘agony and ecstacy’. Because his opponents
were bragging about their visions and experiences, and claiming
as a result to be ‘one up’ on the apostle, Paul very reluctantly
describes his ecstatic experience too. Circumstances have forced
him to do it, and so in a strangely oblique way he speaks of himself
in the third person. Paul was entirely passive – almost a spectator
and hearer, without any volition of his own.

Paul’s reticence about relating his spiritual experiences
is seen again in Gal. 1:15,16. There he describes his dramatic
conversion experience in an objective, almost impersonal way:
‘God in his grace chose me, called me to serve him, decided to
reveal his Son to me…’ When you read 1 Cor. 12-14 carefully,
you’ll find that Paul doesn’t belittle unusual spiritual experiences
or explain them away. He simply wants to put them into proper
perspective.

It happened 14 years before – just previous to his
first missionary journey. He was ‘caught up’ (cf. Philip’s experience
in Acts 8, and 1 Thess. 4:13-17 where the expression is used again)
to the ‘third heaven’, Paradise. He isn’t sure whether he was
conscious or asleep, whether ‘in the body or out of it’…

The NT is deliberately vague about giving us details
of the afterlife. A veil conceals these magnificent mysteries.
Although the rabbis talked about seven heavens, the Bible describes
three: the atmosphere with its clouds; the sun, moon and stars;
and finally God’s abode. Human language is simply inadequate to
describe the glories of God’s heaven, but we are learning, I think,
that there really isn’t such a vast distance between this life
and the ‘life after life’. None of the six ‘resuscitations’ in
the NT tell us anything about what’s over there. (‘Where were
you, Lazarus, those four days? There is no record of reply/ which,
telling what it is to die/ had surely added praise to praise!’).

So Paul, too, can’t tell us about these ‘unutterable
utterances’. It was an experience intended for Paul alone, not
for communication to others. There he’d experienced both ‘visions’
– mental pictures with definite shape and form – and ‘revelations’
– truths understood by special insight.

Why is Paul reluctant about telling us of his special
experiences of God? Surely we ‘praise Him’ in the recounting of
such happenings don’t we?

Perhaps the following reasons may be suggested for
Paul’s reticence:

(1) Such testimonies can be misconstrued as boasting.
Pride – even the semblance of it – is deadly for a Christian.
In fact Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh’ was given to him to prevent
his ‘being puffed up with pride’ (12:7). There’s a sort of proud
exclusivism conveyed by those who’ve been ‘touched’ by the Lord
in a special way. This is often unintentional, but comes across
in all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle ways. There can be a
tendency to classify others into ‘those who have it and those
who don’t’. Such people give the impression – even though they
don’t consciously mean to – of having ‘arrived’ whereas the rest
of us are somewhere else in our ignorance and immaturity.

The corollary of this if, of course, that (2) other
faithful believers, who haven’t had ‘it’ (whatever ‘it’ may be)
can be most discouraged. They feel out of it, or perhaps they’ve
been in the wrong queue when God has been dispensing his gifts.
Some of them give up in despair. Others became ‘charisphobiacs’,
developing an unbiblical theology denying any interventionist
possibilities as being from God. (‘The baptism in the Holy Spirit,
tongues etc., are not for today’s church’ etc.) Still others become
‘experience chasers’, going from meeting to meeting, speaker to
speaker, hoping that someone will at last lay hands on them and
give ‘it’ to them.

Now I don’t want to be insensitive to those faithful
Christians who, thoroughly fed up with their fragile emotions
or spiritual dryness want more of God. All I’m saying is that
because Paul had a Damascus Road or a ‘third heaven’ experience,
he’s not suggesting we have to have one like that too. In fact
he’s saying quite the opposite! There’s a great danger that because
some of our friends have taken ‘a great leap forward’ in their
relationship with God, we get the impression that he works only
in this way. He doesn’t. His more usual pattern is ‘little upon
little, line upon line, precept upon precept’. He’s a grower,
not a technologist! The Biblical images describing his tending
us are agricultural and sometimes maternal. He can baptise us
dramatically by his Holy Spirit (and you ought to be open to that
possibility) but the normal christian life is one of steady growth,
not ‘great leaps forward’.

(3) Some people who’ve had an ecstatic experience
claim more authority, insight or knowledge as a result. Paul’s
detractors in the Corinthian church had this problem. And it’s
common today, too. The typical world-travelled speaker in some
quarters is someone with, perhaps, a ‘gift of faith’ who’s assumed
that such power entitles him to exercise a teaching ministry as
well. He may well have both gifts, or he may not. Some of the
founders of modern sects have claimed superior spirituality (and
even canonical authority) because of their visions and ‘revelations’.

When we read Paul’s letters, the overwhelming idea
he’s conveying is that the Christian life is (4) a life of disciplined
obedience, hardship, struggle, not of continuous ‘mountain-top’
experiences!. The Biblical people encourage us to believe that
God is with them in the valleys, and that the Christian life is
sometimes a real struggle, a ‘fight’, a conflict. Of course, again,
that doesn’t mean ‘peak experiences’ aren’t important in our emotional
and spiritual development. Abraham Maslow and others have taught
us that probably 70% of all humans have had unusual experiences
they can’t explain, and for most these have been most meaningful.

(5) But we mustn’t place too much emphasis on ‘feelings’.
They don’t always correspond to the facts. The concordance tells
us that the word ‘feeling’ only appears 3 or 4 times in the NT.
Seeking God’s gifts because we want ‘fulfilment’ or ‘warm feelings’
is a dangerous motivation. The testimony of all the saints is
that sometimes they just don’t FEEL like praying, for example.
But they also tell us that when it’s hardest to pray is the time
to pray hardest! Some of our young people who got their HSC results
last week told me they ‘felt’ they’d done either better or worse
than they had. But the examiners aren’t interested in their subjective
feelings, but in their objective performances.

(6) Finally, Paul says (12:6) that private spiritual
experiences can’t be verified by others. It’s our Christian character
that matters. The Christian life is a life of obedient commitment
and loving service to Christ and others. Any experiences we have
are means to those ends, not ends in themselves.

Derek Prince describes two lives as analogous to
two gardens. Christian A has been ‘baptised in the Spirit’, but
his life is full of awful weeds. Christian B has a beautiful garden,
with shrubs and flowers displaying a gorgeous array of colour.
‘A’ has a garden hose, but never uses it, ‘B’ only a watering
can, but has a daily disciplined habit of removing weeds and watering
his plants. If ‘A’ had not depended on his spiritual experience
alone, but combined the resultant power with ‘B’s’ discipline,
there would have been quite a different result.

In fact, the history of the church throughout the
world is sadly replete with examples of powerful Christian leaders
who have failed miserably because their spiritual experiences
led them subsequently into a kind of false security. Or else their
‘power’ gifts caused them to misuse their position of authority.
Whoever thinks they are standing firm had better be careful they
don’t fall (1 Cor. 10:12). It is possible to proclaim ‘Lord, Lord,’
and not do the things he says.

There are many Peters today who want to stay on the
Mount of Transfiguration. Thank God for the mountain-top experiences
you’ve had. But don’t stay there!