EXPERIENCE

Truth is now simply a matter of etiquette: it has no authority, no sense of rightness, because it is no longer anchored in anything absolute. If it persuades, it does so only because our experience has given it its persuasive power, but tomorrow our experience might be different.

David Wells

We must always judge our experience by the Word of God. We must never make God’s Word conform to our experience.

Tom Wells

Christian: Take Heart! The Banner of Truth Trust, 1987, p. 14.

The Lord Jesus Christ gave the proper pattern in the Gospel of John, chapter eight, verse thirty-two, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” What that truth is, is seen in the previous verse, “My Word.” God's design is from truth to experience, not from experience to truth! The formula: “I have had an experience. I find experiences like mine in the Bible. Therefore my experience is Scriptural” is dangerously misleading.

George E. Gardiner

The subject of spiritual experience is at the forefront of thinking in evangelicalism worldwide today. A clear line of division can be drawn between those who insist that the Bible must be the basis by which all spiritual experience is tested and those who regard experience as pre-eminent and resist the tests of Scripture. Is the Word our authority, or is spiritual experience our authority? The Puritans were strong in the area of knowing God by heart experience but they sought to test everything by Scripture. We do well to follow their example.

Erroll Hulse

Who Are the Puritans? Evangelical Press, p. 142.

Believe God’s love and power more than you believe your own feelings and experiences. Your rock is Christ, and it is not the rock that ebbs and flows but the sea.

Samuel Rutherford

Experience is a dangerous ground upon which to test ultimate truth, because our experiences may vary, and our interpretation of an experience, however genuine, may be wrong. Scripture clearly says to “test the spirits, whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1). No human can test spiritual realities without the Word of God.

John Napier

Impressions, hunches, intuition, signs, and new revelation become the focus of the Christian instead of moment-by-moment dependence upon Scripture. Soon, even the lines of Christian fellowship are determined by “common experiences” rather than biblical truth. It is a fine line, but what a great deception. Again, Satan is willing to give ground, to gain a greater advantage.

John Napier

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

C.S. Lewis

Mere Christianity, Macmillan, 1960, p. 119.

We should remember that it’s always very important to evaluate impressions, ideas, and experiences in the light of the revealed Word of God. If we do not, we could make some serious errors in judgment and behavior. I’ve known some Christians who have had certain “religious experiences” which contradicted the Bible. Yet they chose to follow their religious experiences rather than the Word of God. The results were spiritually disastrous.

Gene Getz

In an authentic spiritual experience, emotion, feelings, and the senses often become intense, transcending the normal. These may include strong feelings of remorse over sin, a mighty sense of trust that surpasses the pain of a traumatic situation, an overpowering peace in the midst of trouble, the overwhelming sense of joy related to confidence and hope in God, intense sorrow over the lost, the exhilarating praise in understanding the glory of God, or a heightened zeal for ministry. Spiritual experience by definition is an internal awareness that involves strong emotion in response to the truth of God’s Word, amplified by the Holy Spirit and applied by Him to us personally.

John MacArthur

Charismatic Chaos, Zondervan, 1992, p. 26.

[If] we accept the revelation of God in Christ, then we must believe that any experience of God which is valid has an ethical quality defined by what we know of Christ. …Unless the experience includes a setting of the affections and will in the direction of the moral principles of the Gospel, it is no true experience of God, in any Christian sense.

C.H. Dodd

The Johannine Epistles, Hodder and Stoughton, 1946, p. 32.

Whenever evangelicals have an experience of direct, personal access to God, we are tempted to think or act as if we can dispense with doctrine, sacraments, history, and all the other “superfluous paraphernalia” of the Church and make our experience the sum and soul of our faith. We are still attracted to movements that replace thinking and theology by other emphases relational, therapeutic, charismatic, and managerial (as in church growth). Whatever the other virtues of these movements and the unquestionable importance of piety, we must courageously repudiate anti-intellectualism for the sin it is.

Os Guinness

The God we seek is a Person. As we seek Him (and not just an experience of Him) we glorify and do indeed enjoy Him. …It is not “my experience” at which proper worship aims. Fulfilling personal experience is a by-product of God-centeredness in worship.

Terry Johnson

God-Centered Worship? Tabletalk, Jan. 2005, p. 17-18. Used by Permission.

Increasingly our world is short on thinking and long on experience. Mix this with inner turmoil and a desperate need for answers from some higher source, along with the infiltration of eastern religions, and you can easily see why the mystical aspects of our culture are so predominant. Our generation would certainly far rather load all of their information in a computer and forget the agony on thinking, especially thinking biblically.

Jim Elliff

Led by the Spirit, Joshua Press, 1999, p. 34-35, http://www.solascriptura.ca/shop/store.php?crn=215.

When once you are rooted in Reality, nothing can shake you. If your faith is in experiences, anything that happens is likely to upset that faith; but nothing can ever upset God or the almighty Reality of Redemption; base your faith on that and you are as eternally secure as God. When once you get into personal contact with Jesus Christ, you will never be moved again.

Oswald Chambers

My Utmost for His Highest, 1935, December 3 Reading.

While all Christians affirm the necessity and reality of the experiential dimension of faith, the experience must be grounded in and accountable to the Word of God.

Albert Mohler

Worship According to the Word, Tabletalk, Jan. 2005, p. 63. Used by Permission.

We must stress that the basis for our faith is neither experience nor emotion but the truth as God has given it in verbalized, prepositional form in the Scripture and which we first of all apprehend with our minds.

Francis Schaeffer

The New Super-Spirituality, IVP, 1972, p. 24.