An Undeniable Experience with God

When God Shows Up!

Today, I need to do something that I try not do: i.e. to take a whole sermon to introduce the next series and talk more the way that I talk!

I. Understanding The Preacher Helps You Better Understand the Word S/he Is Professing To Preach.

Preachers and preaching are never neutral! The study of the Word and the dissemination of an interpretation of the Word of God is filtered through and delivered through the background, experiences, values, motivations, etc., etc., etc. of a preacher! Just as education cannot be values free, because the teacher cannot be values free. Preaching cannot be values free, because the preacher cannot be value free.

Most people never think about this! They listen to sermons and take the preacher and the sermon at face value and attribute values and motives to them that they want them to have.

Additionally, most preachers generally don’t purposefully reveal their values and motivations for a sermon. Therefore, we are listening to sermons without considering the impact of these variables upon the preacher, ourselves, and the Word of God.

Because I understand these variables and the difficulty that they can cause in getting at an accurate presentation of the Word of God, I often share my values, motivations, etc., so that those listening to me can get an accurate understanding of my interpretation of the Word of God as possible. Consequently, I am going to take today’s sermon to give you my thinking that underlies this new series of messages entitled “An Undeniable Experience with God” or “When God Shows Up!”

I really had a hard time naming this series, because of a number of recent interactions that I have had with people.

The Spirit impressed me to preach on close encounters with God, because they are notably missing from the lives of modern, American Saints! As recovering Evangelicals, we can state that salvation entails a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but what we mean by that is a far, far cry from the actual meaning of the words and the pattern that we see in the Bible.

When we say a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” we actually mean “an intellectual relationship with Jesus Christ”! We are generally referring to how much doctrine or how many Bible verses we know. However, in the Bible, the word “know” denotes deep, personal communion and social intercourse, and often denotes sex.

So, we are actually talking about two different things.

· In America, “to know” is intellectual! In the Bible, “to know” is comprehensively personal!

· In America, rational and technical knowledge is valued, but for the persons who people the pages of the Bible, social, relational, emotional knowledge is valued!

So, I immediately knew that God wanted me to update and re-preach an older series entitled “Close Encounters of the God Kind!”

However, because I am Human, I struggled with some recent criticism that I received about remixing messages and series. I was not struggling over God’s assignment or the power of what He had given me to do, but the pain of the perception of one person and the attack of the devil that was concealed in their criticism.

I’m glad that I had just read the book Breakout Churches, which points out that leaders of Breakout Churches, were often very sensitive, but that didn’t stop them from doing what God called them to do!

While responding to the psychologist who was taking my psychological history for the SPECT scan, she asked me these questions, “You’re sensitive aren’t you?” “You’re stubborn aren’t you?” The answer to both questions is, “Yes!” These are the characteristics of pastors of Breakout Churches, which is based on Level 5 leaders in the book Good to Great!

Additionally, I was struggling with how to package the series so that it would be the most effective. You see, I try to extract the truth or suggestion that I can gain from criticism, and discard the rest.

I was struggling with this at the Joint College of Bishops Congress, when a presenter began to talk about “an undeniable experience.” I wrote that phrase down and began to ponder it, because I was sure that God was saying something to me.

The more I thought and prayed about the phrase, the more I began to become settled in my spirit that this series should be called “An Undeniable Experience.”

II. The Trouble With Experience In America.

While I was gone to Reston, Virginia to get my SPECT brain scan, I gave this subject more thought and prayer. While I was gone, I was reading a book that Dr. Pilch, my Mediterranean Culture professor, told me about. The book is entitled Human Development in Cultural Context: A Third World Perspective, by A. Bame Nsamenang. He is a West African from Camaroon.

He writes about Human development from a much different perspective than the one taught in American psychology. His Third World Perspective, that actually represents two-thirds of the world, is very similar to the Mediterranean cultural perspective that is found in the Bible. This caused me to reflect on the word “experience.” Nsamenang wrote,

“‘Experience is conscious awareness’ (Leff, 1978, p. 4). In a more global sense, experience connotes apprehension or feeling; a conception that includes intuition. Experience arises and operates within an interdependent complex of biological, behavioral, sociocultural, psychological, and environmental inputs. In one sense, ‘the quality of your life over the long haul may be conceived as a weighted composite of all your experiences’ (Leff, 1978, p. 4). We, however, weight experiences differently.”[1]

Before we talk about what I just quoted, I need to set it in educational context for you. Michael E. Lamb of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development writes in the foreword of Nsamenang’s book, “For the first time, a social scientist from a non-Western country has provided a systematic and complete account of human development that is sensitive to the needs, interests, and ecologies of non-Western cultures and individuals.”[2]

(I’m going somewhere, so please stay with me!)

Nsamenang’s book is cutting edge and revolutionary and the last sentence of his quote holds the revolutionary key to us understanding experiences or encounters with God:

“We, however, weight experiences differently.”

Who weights experiences differently? Every society or culture weights experiences differently!

· America weights experiences differently than France!

· France weights experiences differently that Italy!

· African-Americans weight experiences differently than Europeans, and

· Europeans weight experiences differently than Hispanics or Asians!

Furthermore, Americans weight experiences differently than those who populate the pages of the Bible and they weight experiences far differently than we do!

If this is the case, then we cannot accurately understand the experiences and encounters of people in the Bible, until we understand something about the culture that surrounds them.

In fact, our understanding of “experience” is not even the same! The American perspective of an experience is very rational, cerebral, and scientific. We view everything through scientific eyes and believe there is a scientific cause and effect for everything around us. We expect science to be able to solve all of our problems with mathematical precision. That is why this nation could not understand and had no tolerance for a government that could not scientifically produce help for those impacted by hurricane Katrina. Help was as simple as shaking a test tube and pouring out military troops and food in the affected area! All of the bungling of the government not withstanding!

When faced with the prospect that all problems do not have an immediate, scientific solution, we look for someone to blame: a scapegoat. We want to blame someone for fouling up the scientific system that would work perfectly, if not for people!

It never dawns on us that science does not have all the answers and some things do not lend themselves to scientific study or solutions!

The two-thirds world perspective, which is almost identical to the Mediterranean perspective that is found in the Bible, is a social, strong-group culture that is centered in relationships. This causes a completely different perspective and viewing point. Take, for instance, the definition of experience that Nsamenang chose to use. We, i.e. Americans can certainly relate to the first sentence,

“Experience is conscious awareness.”

This lines up well with our rationalistic, scientific culture. However, the next sentence causes us all kinds of trouble:

“In a more global sense, experience connotes apprehension or feeling…”

We hardly know what to do with feelings in America and in the conservative part of the American church. Our relationship is more with our thoughts about God than with God himself, and we hardly know what to do with the accompanying feelings. However, Nsamenang said,

“…in a more global sense.”

Try not to fall off of your seat, but America is not the globe or the world! In fact, America is a very small part of the world, even though she has exerted tremendous influence throughout the world. Yet, our influence is shrinking and our worldview never has been and never will be the predominant worldview of most of earth’s cultures.

Nsamenang continues,

“…experience connotes…a conception that includes intuition.”

Americans are almost completely unaware, unfamiliar, and distrusting of intuition. Only recently, with the work being done in the field of E.Q., i.e. emotional intelligence, have we begun to understand the reality and importance of intuition or knowing through our knower. As Americans, we generally think through our thinkers. This comprises most of our reality. We have relatively little experience or value for feeling with our feelers and knowing with our knowers. However, there is a part of us that can know without rationalization or contemplation!

Nsamenang continues,

“Experience arises and operates within an interdependent complex of biological, behavioral, sociocultural, psychological, and environmental inputs.”

In other words, experience arises and operates within an interdependent combination of complex inputs that include our physical makeup, behavioral imperatives, the cues or pressure that we receive from our culture to act in sensible ways, the mental processes, and environmental inputs like geography, poverty, disease, etc., etc., etc.

If you haven’t understood anything that I have said in the last couple of minutes, let me summarize it for you like this: we all weight experiences differently, because of all of the variability of all of these inputs!

So, the people of the Bible weight their experiences differently than we do, not to mention the fact that we are looking back at the Bible from a distance of 2,000 years and a very diverse culture.

Therefore, when we read these encounters, we are mostly reading them ethnocentrically, i.e. we are reading our culture into the encounters. This would cause us to view the experiences of people in the Bible much differently than they viewed them.

III. Choosing A Title That Communicates And Proceeds From The Bible.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that my title “An Undeniable Experience” was inadequate, because American people can readily deny an experience that does not meet their cultural experience. So, I began to think about new names again.

· I thought about these experiential encounters being what they really are, i.e. alternate states of consciousness, but used that terminology before and I’m not yet sure of the results.

· I thought about “Close Encounters of the God Kind (The Remix),” but the criticism I received and the fact that the typology of the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” is outdated, caused me to rethink that.

· I thought about “A Unique Experience,” but there are parts of these experiences that are very common to people who serve God and are open to them. So, although they are personally unique, in some ways they are common.

· I thought about “Encounters and Experiences with the Eternal.” That is alliterative and catchy, however, I would have to labor with explaining to people what we mean by the eternal. Besides, I don’t care about catchy, even though people seem to!

· I thought about “When God Shows Up!” Now, that’s accurate and catchy, but it didn’t quite capture the experiential aspect of encountering God. So, I added “with God” to the original title and I am using “When God Shows Up!” as a subtitle.

(Some of you don’t care about any of this! You just want me to preach, because you believe that you understand the truth of what I’m preaching! However, I believe that when you understand my presuppositions, you’ll be in a much better position to evaluate whether my preaching and teaching is biblical and you’ll be able to more accurately discern the meaning of the biblical texts that I preach.)

Therefore, today’s sermon is the introduction for the series.

(Before we can start the series, on next Sunday, I need to explain how and why these experiences with God are undeniable, develop a model to explain how the people in the Bible experienced these encounters, or at least set out some of the things that people believed who had these encounters.)

IV. The Introduction To “An Undeniable Experience With God.”

That brings up an excellent question, “Why are there so many experiential encounters with God in the Bible, but seemingly so few in our times?”

(Allow me labor with that question for a moment!)

First of all, people in the first-century circum-Mediterranean culture expect God to show up, while in this culture we don’t expect Him to show up! That is a major issue with interpreting and applying the truths of these encounters. Our culture circumscribes our expectations!

I often get the question, “I want to speak in tongues, so why doesn’t it happen to me?” I usually have a very difficult time explaining to American people how the American culture and mindset has set them up to not expect and to be skeptical of any thing that is supernatural or unexplainable in scientific terms. Even though some of us can say that we desire God to show up, we have a very difficult time doing what it takes to put ourselves in a position for God to show up—because we don’t expect Him to show up! Remember: we many believe that tongues exist, but not believe in tongues!

God does not force Himself on most people and even if He did, we would be likely to interpret His revelations through a scientific lens.

Secondly, more people may be having more encounters with God than are willing to report them. Dr. Pilch writes in His book, Visions and Healing in the Acts of the Apostles, how the early believers experienced God,

“According to Gallup polls (1989: 162-164), Americans admit to having a religious experience [about 33%], are very conscious of the presence of God [81%], or have felt influenced by a presence or power including God [43%]. Subsequent studies that have replicated the Gallup probings have generally produced the same results with the same percentages.”[3]

So, why don’t more people acknowledge and talk about these experiences? Because, those who are having encounters with God understand that they will be looked at with a jaundiced eye and taken as flaky or even crazy. Therefore, they may simply be keeping those encounters to themselves!

(How did we arrive at this point of doubting and discounting experiences?)

In the aforementioned book, Dr. Pilch gives us his theory. He writes,

“Early in the existence of the Jesus movement (i.e. the Church), these experiences were discouraged and perhaps extinguished because of the Gnostics. These latter used their singular type experiences, that is, their personal trance experiences to establish their own authority over and against apostolic claims such as those recorded in Acts. To eliminate these claims, yet to maintain the letters of Paul and the book of the Revelation to which singular type, that is, personal trance experiences, contributed, apostolic authority established a canon or norm of Scripture for Jesus groups. From that time forward no other visions of Jesus had any significance for the community, especially when their message deviated from the content of the New Testament canon (Malina and Pilch 1998: 283).”[4]

This was good for the compilation of the books of the Bible, but it also had the affect of discouraging and extinguishing spiritual experiences!

Nevertheless, contrary to Evangelical dogma and popular belief,

“The experiences, of course, persisted and were reported in the writing of the Fathers of the Church as well as in the Mystical tradition up until the next major effort to discredit them that resulted from the Enlightenment.”[5]

Remember: We are direct beneficiaries of the mindset of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was the

“philosophic movement of the 18th century characterized by an untrammeled but frequently uncritical use of reason, a lively questioning of authority and traditional doctrines and values, a tendency toward individualism, and an emphasis on the idea of universal human progress and on the empirical method in science” (Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary).

In short, we have a scientific mindset, based upon the uncritical use of reason, which does not allow supernatural experiences!

“Yet, since the human person has been neurologically ‘hard-wired’ for this experience, as contemporary brain research points out, the experience will continue as it ever has.”[6]

(Therefore, at a minimum, what would we need to do or not do…think or not think…feel or not feel…to put ourselves in a position to have an undeniable experience with God?)

First, we would have to believe that God is real, that He still speaks, and that He still encounters His children, when we are in the right condition or when He chooses to. This would address the problem I was having with the word “undeniable.” Americans can easily deny any experience that does not fit within their cultural expectations and patterns. One of the definitions of “undeniable” is not able to be denied or refused, because of impact or importance” (Microsoft Encarta World English Dictionary). In order for something to impact us or be important, we must first be open to it. Openness certainly precedes expectation!

Secondly, once we have established some openness, we need to understand enough of the culture and study enough of the biblical encounters with God to understand, value, and expect them. Ultimately, we are going to need to expect God to show up in our lives, because we get what we expect!

However, we are still left with a major question: “Other than seeing God show up for others in the Bible, why do we want God to show up in our lives?”

· So, that we may have a personal relationship and fellowship with Him.

· So, that we may accurately represent Him to the world and to fellow Saints.

· So, that we may avail ourselves of His power to witness on His behalf.

· So, that we may facilitate the final manifestation of His Kingdom!

(Now is the Day of Salvation. Come to Jesus, now!)

Invitation

Call to Discipleship

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[1] A. Bame, Nsamenang, Human Development in Cultural Context: A Third World Perspective, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, California, 1992, p. 33.

[2] A. Bame, Nsamenang, Human Development in Cultural Context: A Third World Perspective, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, California, 1992, p. ix.

[3] John J. Pilch, Visions and Healing in the Acts of the Apostles: How the Early Believers Experienced God, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2004, p. 158.

[4] John J. Pilch, Visions and Healing in the Acts of the Apostles: How the Early Believers Experienced God, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2004, p. 158.

[5] John J. Pilch, Visions and Healing in the Acts of the Apostles: How the Early Believers Experienced God, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2004, pp, 158-159.

[6] John J. Pilch, Visions and Healing in the Acts of the Apostles: How the Early Believers Experienced God, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2004, p. 159.