3 Thoughts in 1 Post

Roger, thanks (as always) for the thoughts! Real quickly: 1. You said look at David and then said look at "me" (being you) as examples of the ordinariness of making decisions that do not rightly find a logical consistency between the "do" and the "be" of who you are. Some might call it hypocrisy. I call it confirmation of the grace-based life. But doesn't your even saying that make the claim that you see a connection? Davids Psalms to me are intimately linked with the joys and pains that flow out of the big picture living in front of God. When he cries out, "How long, O Lord?" are we to read that as a general principle that speaks about perseverance as if disconnected from his life? Or is it a specific example about David's life and the perseverance he had to go through to be the man of God the Lord was making? I think it's both, but you can't read what he says without considering his life and how that affected his need to think those things. Am I any different? Certainly if I live my life unto myself alone, then there is no causal link between you and me. There would be no link between the life I live and what I think from learning in that life on the one hand, and the life you live and what you learn from your life on the other hand. If we live totally unto ourselves, you and I are totally isolated or alienated from one another and so we can disconnect our lives from what we think and just talk about principles that have no link to our lives whatsoever. Welcome to existentialism, welcome to atheism, welcome to hell. But we both live our lives out in front of an infinite-personal God in whom there are not just general principles held up that we can learn and encourage one another by, but there is also some directing going on between His lordship and our obedience, so that He is guiding us and teaching us through the lives we live. And as we live in front of Him, seeing every context as a new place to seek and learn from Him, then there cannot really be any disconnect between the lives we live and the effect our lives have on our understanding of who God is and where our life fits in before Him or before each other. 2. Role of the church: Ephesians 2:20 "So you are no longer foreigners or aliens, but members of God's household, held together by Christ who is the chief cornerstone." (BBV - bad brad version) But yeah, it's taking people off the streets and bringing them into God's house and living together there where God is the papa bear and we are His pride and joy. 3. Transformation and experience: you said, "...there must be an experience before an internal change can occur." I say, "Okay." But then I also say, "But what is the point?" You said, "[so that] an internal change can occur (=transformation) there must be an experience." You agree, then, that the point is transformation. The danger for many people handling experience in the Church is that they make experience the thing sought after and it becomes the point. In other words, "Experience = transformation". And that is a far different statement. I would agree that very often God confirms His truth and demonstrates transformation with experience. But experience is no test and it is no base to build on. Though often God gives confirmation of the goodness of the foundations that we need THROUGH experience, you can't say that the foundation IS experience. So, to me the question isn't, "Should or shouldn't there be experience in our faith?", but more correctly, "Where should or shouldn't there be experience in our faith?". To me, experience is a blessing of confirmation and encouragement, and it is and should be testable by God's truth and God's character and the fruit born in the life of the person being encouraged by experiences. If you want I can tell you lots of stories of people living out this difference. For now, I'll stop preaching and just say, ROCK ON for the questions and the things God wants to teach us all together in the rubbing and stretching of being His household! Amen. ("Amen" is a Hebrew phrase, I think, that means "let it be so").