What do we do when our beliefs don't match our experience?
I was wondering how we as Pentecostal/Charismatic/Word/Full Gospel people deal with how things don't necessarily run in a straight line when we believe something one way, but it happens another way.
Do we change what we believe to reflect our experience?
Do we disbelieve our experience and cling to our belief?
Do we find a middle ground somewhere between the two?
I was wondering how we as Pentecostal/Charismatic/Word/Full Gospel people deal with how things don't necessarily run in a straight line when we believe something one way, but it happens another way.
Do we change what we believe to reflect our experience?
Do we disbelieve our experience and cling to our belief?
Do we find a middle ground somewhere between the two?
Well, if our belief has no foundation in the truth then our belief needs to change but not based on experience, but rather based on scriptures. Truth equaling a scriptural foundation. So, if my experience doesn't match up with what the Scriptures say, then I will disbelieve my experience and cling to the Word of God. The same for if I receive a Rhema word. I will cling to the Word. I think this is part and partial of walking by faith and not by sight.
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They always say, "One who has an experience isn't at the mercy of one with an argument," though I wouldn't say it's entirely true, because if the Bible is infallible, and an experience goes against the Bible, then you should certainly question the experience. On the other hand, make sure you know your Bible, because you can accidentally quench the work of the Spirit, I think.
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On today's discernment:
Jeremiah 6:29 (NIV) - "The bellows blow fiercely to burn away the lead with fire, but the refining goes on in vain; the wicked are not purged out."
Scripture is our plumb line. If our experience is in contradiction to scripture, then our experience is a fraud, it is invalid. God will not contradict Himself and He does not change. Now, not all situations are black and white, there are grey areas, and there it is important that we are being led by the Spirit.
But the first step is to check what is going on against the revealed truth of Scripture.
__________________ "A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged. The Marxist creed has now been inverted. The true opium of modernity is the belief that there is no God, so that humans are free to do precisely as they please."
Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz
"I can almost forgive the palistinians for killing our children. I can never forgive them for making us kill theirs." Golda Meir
You usually need to reevaluate what you believe about God and Life...Your experiences are surely not wrong, God is surely not wrong, so what needs to be done is an reevaluation of how you relate what you are experiencing with God and look at it through the eyes of God and not your own expectations or even desires of how things should be happening or happen.
You usually need to reevaluate what you believe about God and Life...Your experiences are surely not wrong, God is surely not wrong, so what needs to be done is an reevaluation of how you relate what you are experiencing with God and look at it through the eyes of God and not your own expectations or even desires of how things should be happening or happen.
To this I will add: We interpret both Scripture and our experiences. That is the nature of humanity - we constantly are interpreting. We evaluate, analyze and attach meaning to things. We can't help it - that's how our brains function. That's how God created us to be.
For an example of interpreting experiences: someone who is highly superstitious will attach meaning to an event that to everyone else is meaningless - a black cat, a broken mirror, a raven, etc. It can not be argued that the person's experience is faulty. The person truly experienced a black cat crossing his/her path. It's the significance of that experience, however, that is being misunderstood/misinterpreted. It is the way in which the experience is understood to fit into a person's worldview that can be wrong, not the experience itself.
Neither Scripture nor experience can be understood by us in an absolute manner because we can never step outside of ourselves or remove the bias of our worldview, to see clearly. "For now we see through a glass darkly". It's like looking at everything through tinted glasses - whether we're looking at the circumstances of our life or Scripture, we see a distorted picture.
We need the Holy Spirit to teach us the truth of Scripture and the truth of our experiences. And the Holy Spirit will use Scripture to show us that our understanding of what is happening to us may be skewed just as He will use circumstances and experiences to show us that our understanding of Scripture is skewed. It's not just a one way street.
I don't think we should be so closed-minded that we are unwilling to reevaluate either our experiences or our understanding of Scripture or both when things don't seem to be lining up.
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To this I will add: We interpret both Scripture and our experiences. That is the nature of humanity - we constantly are interpreting. We evaluate, analyze and attach meaning to things. We can't help it - that's how our brains function. That's how God created us to be.
For an example of interpreting experiences: someone who is highly superstitious will attach meaning to an event that to everyone else is meaningless - a black cat, a broken mirror, a raven, etc. It can not be argued that the person's experience is faulty. The person truly experienced a black cat crossing his/her path. It's the significance of that experience, however, that is being misunderstood/misinterpreted. It is the way in which the experience is understood to fit into a person's worldview that can be wrong, not the experience itself.
Neither Scripture nor experience can be understood by us in an absolute manner because we can never step outside of ourselves or remove the bias of our worldview, to see clearly. "For now we see through a glass darkly". It's like looking at everything through tinted glasses - whether we're looking at the circumstances of our life or Scripture, we see a distorted picture.
We need the Holy Spirit to teach us the truth of Scripture and the truth of our experiences. And the Holy Spirit will use Scripture to show us that our understanding of what is happening to us may be skewed just as He will use circumstances and experiences to show us that our understanding of Scripture is skewed. It's not just a one way street.
I don't think we should be so closed-minded that we are unwilling to reevaluate either our experiences or our understanding of Scripture or both when things don't seem to be lining up.
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As usual, you have a way of hitting the nail on the head. It our skewed understanding and like you said, we are constantly interpreting.
The day we stop allowing the Holy Spirit to interpret our lives to us and who God is, etc, and he will, is the day we stop growing. It is where religion and legalism starts and ends...There is no room for growth.
what Ms Tamara said. couldnt say it better and shouldnt try
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