Experiential Relevance

Do you ever ask the question, "Why do I believe what I believe?" And if we do ask ourselves this, then what is the answer we come up with? And is there any way to test this "belief"?

Ravi Zacharias gives us three tests for truth:

Logical Consistency- Are there any contradictions found in what we believe?

Empirical Adequacy- Does it have verifiable observations, practical experience/facts you can use in court?

Experiential Relevance- Does it work in real life?

These are the three truth tests, that I am not going to get into, but we all need to be familiar with. In our nights at LIVE we have been discussing these three applications. We cannot just come back with an answer of "your wrong, I'm right." We need to have communication skills when we visit about our faith and evidence to back it up with. We must be respectful of others and allow them to talk freely. But here I like to focus on Experiential Relevance. This is where we all have practical application, even if we do not realize it.

Last night we started our conversation with "suffering". On November 5 in Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, he discusses suffering. Now there are many different ways of suffering. I have suffered because of choices that I have made and I have suffered because of things that happened to me that were not part of my own fault at all. But they both fall under the title of "suffering." I have told my group for years now, "I wouldn't take any of it away." And I wouldn't! Now do not get me wrong. I do not like it when I am suffering. I wallow and I cry and beg God to take it away. But after the suffering is lifted I can see where my heart was led and for that reason alone I wouldn't change a thing. Every bit of my suffering has taken me back to God. This journey has been a life path for me to find my Lord. A journey that He has been in full knowledge from the beginning. Time for a story...

When I was a little girl, my family would camp at Lodgepole camp ground on the Taylor River in Gunnison Colorado. Right at the bend in the road stood an aspen tree that my father carved my initials JS. For years that tree stood. My husband also vacationed near Gunnison in a little mining town above Taylor reservoir called Tin Cup. My tree was his marker that "he was almost there" on his long drive from Oklahoma. When we met twenty years later the tree was removed because of some road construction. But we were both "there." Not that our journey was so that we would find each other, but that we would have a better understanding of God and His ways.

On November 7 of Oswald Chambers we read about The Undetected Sacredness of Circumstances. This is one of my hardest life lessons to learn from. Through all of my suffering, through all of my life experiences did God make me suffer? Did He wave His magic wand and wish bad for me? ...there is no such thing as chance. God by His providence brings you into circumstances that you can’t understand at all, but the Spirit of God understands. God brings you to places, among people, and into certain conditions to accomplish a definite purpose through the intercession of the Spirit in you.

God does not choose for me to hurt myself in my choices that I make.  But He does choose for me to always be able to see Him, often in hindsight, through the road that I have traveled and for me to see that He has always been there.  From the time that I was a little girl, God was with me.  I can see it in the tree that Jason and I were a part of.  Again, not so that I would find him, but that I would find Him.  It was through my suffering that I have discovered that I turned more toward God.  It was through my suffering that I found more relationship with the Christ and discovered that He relates to us through His suffering.  And the tie that bind's all of us together, is the travels through suffering that we all are a part of. 

This very small example is of experiential relevance in my own life. Can you see yours?  What is it in your life that you can point to Him and say, "But God..." Through the three tests of truth, if you still do not want faith, if you choose to not believe, no one can convince you. Often it is not about our will to believe that we struggle with.  Many times it is our will to disbelieve. When I begin to struggle and doubt, I turn to the three tests. My personal experience speaks loudest to my heart. But if I am determined to go my own way about something, I find that I can rely on unbelief to justify what I am doing. We all have faith in something. Even if we express it as, "I have no faith in anything. I don't even have faith in myself. Faith cannot be proven and I have no idea where I will end up." That statement is a statement of faith. You are putting your faith in the arena of agnosticism. This seems like a safe place, but in the end it leaves us with a feeling of unfulfillment. We are impotent in our life and have no meaning or mystery.  It is the mystery that keeps us looking.  It is the mystery of God that keeps us hungering for more.   It is the suffering of the cross that ties us all together and the majesty in mystery that keeps us hungering for more.