Where’s the beef?

There are lots of different studies out there that try to quantify the percent of Christian adolescents that keep their faith after leaving home, and explain why not. These studies have a high degree of variability in their results, but the overarching conclusion is usually the same for American churches: we are bleeding from an arterial wound that will eventually be the death of Christianity in America. Well okay, no statistical study would ever state that in a conclusion, but that is the reality that I see. Some studies indicate that as much as 94% of Christians do not remain in their faith after leaving home! Either Christians are not being equipped with the correct foundation to stand against the pressures of the world, or modern-day churches are not effectively reaching the younger generations. Probably both are true.

Studies aside, what does your own experience tell you? Me personally, I feel physically sick to my stomach each time I hear about a friend who I know (or at least believed) had a strong relationship with the Lord but has since fallen away. Sickens me, and my heart aches for them, and my soul asks the question, “why Lord?”

If everything the bible says is true, if everything you’ve done is true, if you are the almighty God, powerful and mighty to save, why is it so difficult for people to remain true to their faith?

There are many many answers to this question: Original sin, free will, intellectual pride, peer pressure, lies of the evil one, desires of the flesh…. All of these things require training, obedience, and reliance on the Holy Spirit to overcome.

But in many cases I think it’s the difference between intellectual religion, relational religion, and experiential religion. Intellectual religion is based on knowledge. Most important is knowledge of the bible, but many denominations also burden their members with requiring them to know and understand denominational tradition, or how their specific interpretation of the bible influences their theology.

Relational religion is critical to any Christian life, afterall the goal for a Christian should always be to seek a deeper relationship with their savior, and fellowship with the Body of Christ is an important part of that. However, what I’m referring to here as relational religion is that which is so tied to fellowship that belonging to the body is more important than the relationship with the Lord. The desire to feel loved and included can cause us to do things for the wrong reasons. Although this is probably the perfect entry point for seekers and an effective form of early evangelism, it is a very “fair-weather” form of Christianity and believers should quickly realign their priorities to be right with God first.

Experiential religion is the type where each lesson learned by the Christian is tied to an event or object. This is not head knowledge, in fact it is typically in-spite of head knowledge (either too little or too much of it). It’s experiential faith, where God provided a circumstance, a revelation, a healing, an encounter, etc, that brought you to a new level in your faith life, or taught you a lesson which would otherwise would have been difficult to learn.

[Intellectual knowledge of the bile is still critical, but even this can be viewed as a form of experiential religion if you approach the scripture as the Living Word and sharp like a two edge sword. Not simply reading for the head knowledge, but seeking God’s character and blessing in those scriptures.]

I have heard it said, “A man with an argument is no match for a man with an experience”. I agree with this, even if you don’t understand the experience, your experience supersedes everything else and you believe it to be true. I believe this is the kind of faith that God has in store for us, this is the kind of faith that can move mountains, this is the kind of faith that the apostles used to change the world, even to the point of dying for what they believed in. That’s the kind of faith I want to have.

But, how does one grow in faith experientially? It seems to me this was one of the many purposes of the Holy Spirit, our Wonderful Counselor. John 14:26 says the Holy Spirit will come to teach us all things, and I assure you he doesn’t mean intellectually. Furthermore, the Gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor 12) are tools God gives to his people so that we can experience and share the love of God experientially, and there-in be built up in the Lord growing in faith, love, and knowledge.

But it’s been my experience until recently that most churches do not take advantage of these gifts. These gifts live on the border between the natural and the supernatural, but we humans are fearful of anything we don’t understand. We explain away the supernatural or hide it for fear of being considered a zealot. But a church without the spiritual gifts is like a hamburger without the patty. Where’s the beef? Where’s the power? Where’s the evidence that everything you claim to believe in is true? Where’s the evidence that this God you claim to love is real and alive is actually moving in the world today so that I might worship him too?

Without the gifts of the Holy Spirit Christians tend to answer these questions in very hippy-sounding ways: “feel the love man”, “we’ll love one another, that is how they’ll know we are Christians”, “love your neighbor as yourself.” Now, I’m not trying to down play the importance of love. In fact I am fully aware that Jesus considered this the 2nd most important commandment. I am also aware that we are given the gifts of the Holy Spirit wholly for the purpose of loving God’s people, both saved and unsaved. Without love, we are like a clanging gong, driving people away from God rather than towards him. However, if all we do is try to love someone into the kingdom of heaven, we haven’t done half of what Christ called us to do. In love, Christ wants us to do everything he did, heal the sick, cast out demons, feed the hungry, care for the children, preach the gospel (all of the gospel). The gospels tell us that it would be impossible for books to contain all of the miracles Jesus did during his short time in ministry, and yet Jesus told us that we would do even greater things than these! (John 14:12) Do you believe in Jesus? If so, then you must accept him as your rabbi and believe what he says is true.
If he says we will do even greater things than these, why are we so quick to discredit the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Paul even urged us “not to be ignorant of these things (1 Cor 12:1)”. The founders of our faith considered these gifts to be critically important to executing the Great Commission, and yet my Christian experience has not included them until recently. In fact I’ve even been to churches that have written in their statement of faiths that they do not believe the miraculous gifts are intended for the church today (dispensationalists perhaps?) But there is nothing in the scripture to indicate that they would some day become unnecessary.

If God is all powerful, immutable, unchanging, now and forever loving, then he wants to heal the sick, raise the dead, let the blind man see, let the lame walk, let the deaf hear, let the mute speak, just as much today as he did 2000 years ago. And he wants to use the Holy Spirit that lives within you to do it! You get to experience the joy of being the executor of God’s will and see the results (sometimes).

In summary, real faith, unmovable faith, can only be built on experiential encounters with the living God. It’s okay to pray for miracles, because God delights in honoring your child-like faith. Experiential encounters happen through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which God gives to all of his children for their edification. I thank God that I have found a church that is not ignorant of these things, and encourages its members to step out in faith, faith in the promises of God contained in his Word.

With this new perspective on faith and ministry, it is easy for me to see why so many people, who have not experienced real encounters with God, would fall away from the church. Fellowship bonds can only take a person so far, eventually they will ask, “where’s the beef?”

And that is really where this blog begins. This new viewpoint on scripture, scripture that I have glazed over for the last 31 years, scripture that has never been taught to me with authority or understanding, I am currently seeing new areas of my faith life open up, and I want to share more of them with you.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are throughout the bible, but these are some powerhouse chapters that I recommend re-reading. I encourage you to remove any mental filters you may currently have towards these chapters and try to accept them as literal.

John 14 and 15
1 Cor 12 and 14
Pretty much all of Acts

The Holy Spirit & You (Bennet) – Great down to Earth explanation of the charismatic gifts.

In Christ,
Nate