Sermon Tone Analysis

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An Undeniable Experience with God

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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,