I noticed that someone did a search through the August 2005 archives, so just for kicks I looked at what I posted a year ago August 25th. Today is also my brother's birthday - so happy 43 to Gary, you are officially OLD since I'm only 41. Ha! :o)
In any event, a year ago today I didn't post here, I posted at the now defunct Challies Community Blog. I thought it was a good idea at the time (the community blog) but I think the majority of Tim's readers simply preferred Tim's content instead. There were some really great contributions from several others to the community blog though. So without further delay, here is a recycled post from 1 year ago today:
__________________
CONVERTED TO TRUTH
I'd like to examine an issue that's been a fairly dominating topic of conversation lately, among my circle of friends. The topic is "experience superceding the written word". This is a personal, and delicate topic, due to the fact that we all have very emotional experiences that contribute to defining who we are, how we think, etc.
More specifically, I want to look at how experience determines what we think or believe surrounding our conversion to Christ. And this is where it gets personal for alot of people - and personally treading on what seems to be holy ground - for many. I do not wish to sound insensitive at all, but I do wish to examine all things, including all experiences, with the permeating light of the word of God.
Almost everyone has experiences with the 'spiritual' or the 'religious' or the 'supernatural', that they can remember, and recount for others. I'm no different than anyone else, and have a few of these kinds of experiences myself. One I would like to examine is the "conversion experience" I had when I was 11. It was 1975, and I found myself in the home of a local neighborhood pastor, hearing the gospel. The events that led me there that day, included a fight on the playground, some cuss words, and some pretty hurt and shocked little girls - myself included.
After a long talk, and myself mostly nodding in affirmation (I really did agree with all he said), he led me in the "sinner's prayer". I meant every word, and wanted what the pastor had to offer, in the way of being a new creation in Jesus. After the amen's and hugs, I ran home feeling like a million bucks. I wanted to tell everyone, and I wanted everyone to be as happy as I was, at that moment. I clearly remember feeling clean, feeling new, somehow. The next day at school, it was business as usual. That night at home, it was also, business as usual. There was no change in my life, at all. No change in my thinking, none in my attitude, or in my heart. For the next 18 years I lived in the world, and was of the world, and only from time to time thought about that very real, very emotional experience.
This experience was very real indeed, and I recall many details of the event to this very day.
However, I no longer believe this is when real conversion took place, regardless of the very real, very emotional experience - which included many tears (from me) and a rather unexplainable compulsion to drop to my knees as the pastor prayed for me. I recall feeling the need to get as low to the floor as I could, although I didn't know why. Many years later, after real conversion did take place, I shared this with some charismatic friends. They were adamant that I was truly saved at 11, based on the experience I shared with them, and that it was just a matter of being backslidden for 18 years.
I believed that. For a while.
For the first 4 years of my conversion at age 29, I was in a charismatic church that was about to break onto the evangelical scene with a jump in a river and a catching of the fire. Not my specific church, but my denomination. My church however, was on the bandwagon in the northwest. You could say my church was driving the bandwagon, in the northwest.
Christianity, was all about experience. It was all about emotion, feeling, manifestations, visions, and the like. This was the order of the day, and the more of these experiences you had, the more annointed, the more "being used of God" you were, and essentially, the more spiritual you were. It was never said outright (that I am aware of), but it was commonly understood that the less of these things you personally experienced, the lesser of faith, you were. Less spiritual, and more rebellious toward the working of the Holy Spirit in your heart/life/home/family/ministry.
In all honesty, many faked or flat out made up, "experiences" to share with others. Many even fooled themselves into believing the concocted experiences happened in the first place. It's a bizarre thing, that spiritual-peer-pressure will do to people who are experience-driven.
When I would have these conversations with my charismatic friends back then, it always disturbed me that there seemed to be an underlying personal stake for them, that I believe that I was saved, at 11. I didn’t understand that impression I got from them, and simply chalked it up to myself being a new believer and lacking the kind of discernment they had. It wasn’t until many years later, after I had left that church, and left the charismatic and free will teachings, and embraced the doctrines of grace (or as one friend says, ‘they embraced me’), that I began to really examine my own conversion experience. In particular, it was a question from a new believer that really made me think deeply about it. They asked “how do I really know I’m saved?”. Out of somewhere deep in my head flew this answer: “Look in 1John chapter 5, verses 1 through 13, and that will answer your question”. To be perfectly frank, I don’t even know how I knew that, or where it came from. I don’t ever remember anyone at my old church telling people to look for Scripture to confirm anything – let alone that passage. Maybe I’d read it somewhere, or maybe I’d read the very passage itself, and had taken comfort in it at some prior time. I can’t say for sure, but for some reason it struck me as unusual that I, of all people, would know that passage so well, and direct someone to Scripture, to examine their faith.
What struck me at the time was that I wasn’t even all that confident of my own conversion time-frame. I was sure of my salvation, just not when it happened, or how I knew for sure that it did happen, when I thought it did. I had talked to a lot of people who had a very similar experience as mine, and they also went back to living in the world after their experience, and still insisted that’s when they were saved – or converted to Christ. It kept occurring to me whenever I would think of this, something seemed missing. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was definitely missing, whatever it was. Eventually it came to me that what was missing, or overly stressed was actually 4 things.
1. no confidence of conversion because of the Scriptures
2. not being circumspect, or even willing to examine experiences according to the Scripture
3. insistence of conversion because of experience
4. insistence of conversion even while acknowledging no inward change in the early years
Over and over again, I would hear “I know I was saved because I felt…” or “I know that’s when I was saved because this is what happened…”.
Never did I hear:
“I know I was saved because I believed in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, according to 1Corinthians 15, that tells me I am saved if I believe this – and the “this” I believe is that Jesus died for my sins and rose again on the third day, praise God, I believe!”
Now that may sound odd, or like a long winded answer, but it would have been a blessing to hear someone affirm their salvation testimony according to the Scripture, rather than according to their experience. I was still struggling with solid Biblical teaching at the time, and really needed to know how we can be sure, not how we can have experiences.
The other thing I never heard was how you can be a new creation in Christ, according to 2Cor. 5:17, that old things (things, times, conditions) are passed away (perished – dead), and all things are become new – and yet you can claim to be converted at one point, but live in the world for years, before a sudden inward change come upon you. That part didn’t make any sense whatsoever. Even a child can see the inconsistencies with this.
Now this is not to say that we don’t still battle with the lusts of the flesh, because we all do. But it is to say, according to the Scripture, that the old condition is gone. That old condition that is self-centered, unbelieving, hating the things of God, living in the world and thoroughly enjoying it. So the question begs, if the old condition is dead, in a new creature of Christ, how do so many live according to the fulfillment of the desires of the flesh (like defined in Eph 2:3) , after a conversion experience? I can only speak for myself, as I examined my own 18 year span between the first "conversion" experience, and the one I had at 29 years old. The one glaring absence, was the inward change. There was no love for the Lord, as defined by Deuteronomy 10:12, there was no hatred for my own sin, no gratitude to Him for His grace, no love for the brethren (I didn’t even know who the brethren were – I thought all Christians were idiots using the religion crutch), and there was certainly no godly sorrow – no repentance toward Him. Only repentance of self, like Judas did when he was exposed. He felt sorry for himself to the point of taking his own life. I felt sorry for myself to the point of delving deeper into the garbage of the world.
Then came April 1994. Another “conversion experience”. This one was different. Like night and day it was different. Everything changed – and I do mean everything. My thoughts, my words, my emotions, compassion toward others, a great fear (reverence) of God (that never existed before), a desire to search the Bible, to know more, to be under His guidance, to trust Him, to communicate with Him in prayer – there was not 1 area of my life that did not radically change. Those things that may not appeared on the outside to have change – I battled with in sorrow, and in prayer, silently.
As a side note - somewhere along the line it also occured to me how our experiences, as fallen creatures, are tempered with corrupt emotions. To give an example:
When we love, it's not pure and holy love
When we hate, it's not righteous hatred
When we're jealous, it's not because we have a right to be
When we get angry, it's not always pure, righteous anger
I knew in dealing with my own children, that I was not always as discerning as I wished I could be, no matter how hard I tried to be a good mom. One day it occured to me that when I got angry at them for breaking a rule, that part of that anger was selfish, and their disobedience actually inconvenienced me, and I had to deal with them, and I, I, I, me, me, me. It struck me that our emotions are always in part, self-centered, and self-absorbed. Which led me to consider numerous other emotions and feelings we express, and how they also might be corrupt, and manifest in selfish ways. This led me to Jeremiah 17:9 that laid it out for me:
The heart (seat of the emotions) is deceitful (sly, insidious, slippery) above all things, and desperately (weak, sick, incurable) wicked: who can know it?
That 1 verse alone nailed it for me, that I did not want to be trusting in my own emotions - if they didn't line up exactly with the written word.
So in conclusion… 2 conversion experiences. One that bore much feeling, and bore no resemblance to the converted of Scripture, the other that bore much fruit, and could be aligned with Scripture.
This topic has come up a lot lately, and over and over again, it seems that so many people are so eager to trust their experiences, even if those experiences cannot be affirmed by the written word of God. I did the same thing myself, for a long time, even though doing so never seemed to be consistent. Even though I wasn’t even sure what about it was inconsistent.
I realize this might seem scattered – and there are numerous other issues that certainly do have a factor in all this, but I hope you were able to follow this enough to understand the difference between conversion experience rooted in feeling, and conversion experiences rooted in the effectual call of God.
One is self-confirming, the other is Word-conforming.
Related Tags: sovereign grace, baptist, the 5 solas, Christian homeschooling, Christian t-shirts and gifts
In any event, our grand finale Labor Day weekend hoo-haa plans have been scrapped. Thanks to 
You know, I remember turning 6. I remember it very well, in fact. I remember my cake, my presents, and my shoes. 
So, I'm in the kitchen last night making mashed potatos & fried chicken, and Kev comes in and tells me he would like to set him up with 
I figured this KitKat ChunKy Cinnamon candy bar would make me feel better, but it didn't. It did taste great, and I got a great deal on them today, 2 for 90 cents... but I still feel like I was backed over by a bus. 
We did have a casualty though. It was brutal, and most unfortunate for poor Neil. This enormous beast of a Beagle-ette, had her way with him and that was the end of that.
This is the man believed to have these two boys with him. His name is Peter Whitmore. If you've seen him, or them, please call the police to report it, so that justice might be served and these boys can go home where they belong. Whitmore is six feet tall, white, with a heavy build, brown hair and blue eyes. He may be driving a 1988 blue Dodge Caravan with wood panelling and Alberta licence plate.
