Not just belief, but experience

Having recently become a father for the second time I have come to know tiredness once again in a very real, pass the matchsticks, kind of way. As I am sure many Parents will recall the interrupted and sleepless nights, all goes with the territory of course, but nothing quite prepares you or compares to the birth of baby.

I was thinking the other day about how easy it can be as Christians to become tired and to get into a bit of a rut with our Christian experience. I have had times in my earlier Christian life where being a Christian was just about arriving on a Sunday morning and then going home. Don't get me wrong I was saved and had belief & faith but experience... did have much of that. It is all too easy "to believe" but for that to kind of end there. It is all too easy to turn up at Church for an hour or so on a Sunday morning, enjoy a prayer-hymn sandwich, be preached at for 45 mins and then go home. The danger being that the Christian life can become packaged up into a hour and 15 minutes, or as was described in a recent sermon I heard, we can end up putting all the God stuff in the attic room of our lives - all a bit dusty and forgotten about. The problem with such an experience and structure to local church life is that it can become too familiar and can suck the life out of what God really wants from us and for us.

I mentioned the word "experience" in the context of what we can experience in our Christian lives. For me having been a Christian from an early age, I do not want to settle for a Christian life that is merely about attending and little else, I need to feel engaged, to be able to give and not just receive. In the local church there has to be an environment where individuals can respond and feel they are able to make a contribution and whilst I accept that everyone has their own different tastes in terms of style and emphasis, for me the need for corporate worship and response is very important.

Familiarity breeds contempt is a commonly used phrase and although I don't in fact agree that it does in all cases I do think that the familiar can sometimes draw away some of the passion that we might have. Returning to the desire to experience God's power in my life, in recent years I have come to know this as meaning meeting with God every day and not just on a Sunday, that God is interested as a good Father would be in all the incidental and mundane things of life. In the simple decisions I make day-to-day, in the choices I make about the future. Also understanding more that the Christian life goes beyond initial belief but pervades the being, the soul and that I am more in tune with a God who wants to speak to me in different ways and of a Holy Spirit who is a person.

If I did not have this sense of a relationship with God, then my Christian life might be all based on belief and perhaps head knowledge without the spiritual understanding I have today. I often think how much better I would be at witnessing for God if I could somehow describe the "experience" and "relationship" I have with a God who wants the very best for us in our lives. So when a non-christian might ask what's it all about, sometimes I have to say I believe these things and choose this way of life because I have a relationship with God and that the only way you will know what I am talking about is if you too are in that same relationship. It is not just about belief, or attending church or reading your bible everyday, it is about walking with a God who is a Father and who has given us the power of the Holy Spirit to lead lives that can be fulfilled and have a value beyond the mere fraction of time we spend on earth in our early bodies.

So for me and perhaps for many, the Christian life might start as a "yes, I believe that" but it doesn't stop there or at least it shouldn't. It goes beyond that as the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us and as we grow in our faith and understanding of the things of God. We also learn to listen to Him and get to know Him and learn more about His truths. When it comes to witness from a personal point of view I have come to understand that I am far better telling of what God has done for me and how He is talking to me each day, than to attempt some sort of essay on salvation, others are much more gifted as Evangelist than me. So recently I would say how God helped me decide on the name of Abigail for our new baby, namely it was on a list of two or three, but we liked the meaning and the biblical story. Then on the evening before we went into Hospital for induction of labour, from the reading in my "One Year Bible" (NIV) it was the passage in Samuel that described Abigail and her story (how she assisted David and how she ultimately would be become one of his wives). This was confirmation for me. I could witness to answered prayer in the safe delivery of Abigail and point to the fact that we knew nothing about the potential problems that can accompany a two vessel placenta, something which was not detected in scans and was hidden from us and the additional worry and concern we may have had. Also, the joy of a baby Girl and of a God who likes to surprise us, heard testimony recently of another birth of a Girl when everyone thought it was a Boy - a surprise and one that was felt the heart of God right in the centre of it all. For us, God has blessed us with one of each and I am thankful for a loving God and a loving Father who holds us all in his hands and sustains our life and our families.

So a Christian life, with all it's ups and down's, without the sense of a God as a Father and companion next to me every day is not worth thinking about. There have been so many instances in recent times that God is talking directly to me and I have to say it is a thrill when you become aware of it. It's like sometimes "who me ? you talking to me ?" That experience, that knowledge is difficult to sometimes describe but you just know. This for me is what experiencing and enjoying the Christian life is all about.