1 Corinthians 2:1-6(NKJV) 1And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the £testimony of God. 2For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 3I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. 4And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of £human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. 6However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.
This week we are looking at the third aspect of our mandate for 2012. I believe the church must possess the land that God has given us. This means cultivating an attitude that says, “What my Father has given me is mine. I will not allow anyone or anything to take it from me.” To accomplish this we must drive out the enemies that hinder us. Those enemies come from the world, the flesh or the devil. Finally, in order to keep what we possess, we must occupy the ground we take and do so until the Lord comes back.
This final area differs from the first two in some ways. Although all of three involve the actions of the Word of God, the Holy Spirit and a deep understanding of our relationship with the Lord, the first two emphasize the emotional and experiential aspects of our Christian experience. Occupation emphasizes understanding the principles and establishing the order of the Kingdom of God in our lifestyle.
For Pentecostal or Charismatic Christians, it is often difficult to find the balance between these two points of view. Many Spirit filled believers identify with the experiences associated with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It is part of our joy and our identity that we are emotional about our relationship with the Lord. Feeling his presence is vital to how we worship. We do things like speak in other tongues and prophecy. These imply an actual manifestation of the Spirit of God in and through us.
In our church, we believe in an exuberant type of praise and worship that involves dancing, singing, clapping and shouting. We raise our hands to signify both surrender to God and the idea of reaching to the Father expecting him to touch us. Experience is fundamental to what we are.
On the other hand, we are a “Word” church as well. By that, I mean we believe in the absolute accuracy of the written Word of God, the Bible. We believe that the Bible is where everything in our Christian faith must begin. It is the first and final authority in every situation. Hebrews 4 says that the Word of God is a living thing. We believe that the Bible contains creative seeds that can change circumstances, bodies and our hearts if we apply them in our lives.
Although these two perspectives are not exclusive to one another, they are often difficult to reconcile. To those who lean toward the experiential part of what we believe, the Bible can seem a little dry. They want the excitement of the emotions and experiences we love so much. To those who are drawn to the stability of commitment to the Word of God, being overly concerned with experiences can seem chaotic and even dangerous. Of course, the answer is to find a balance between these two elements of our Christian walk.
I have heard this dilemma described way. If you have the Word of God but no spiritual experience, you will dry up. If you have spiritual experiences without the Word of God, you will blow up. If you have both the Word and the Spirit actively working in your life, you will grow up. To possess, drive out and occupy you must grow up. This is especially true in the area of occupying until Jesus comes.
I like to illustrate the balance this way. We fall in love, but we must learn to be married. If we are going to have a healthy marriage, we must have both elements working. Hollywood knows about falling in love. Actors fall in love on the screen and off all the time. Rarely does their love result in lasting relationships. They fall in love and then they fall out again.
Falling in love is an experience. It creates a relationship based on that experience. However if the relationship goes no farther than the experience it will end when the experience fades. Anyone who has been married a long time knows that the experience of love comes and goes. In the times when the feelings are not there, something else must sustain it.
There are also people who marry but are not in love. As a pastor, I hate to hear, “God told us to marry.” as the main reason a couple wants to go to the altar. I believe we should consider the will of God in marriage; however, I really want to hear that the couple also loves one another. It they do not, they may learn how to be married. They may stay married a long time, but the marriage will not be happy or healthy.
Without love marriage is just an arrangement for sharing the expenses of life, legal sexual relations and having children. To be a real marriage there must be some kind of emotional relationship between husband and wife. There must be some kind of passion for the marriage to be healthy. We need to fall in love and then learn to be married. Both are vitally important.
We see this same truth in raising children. Children are conceived in passion. Many young people have found themselves parents too early in life because their passion gained control and a child resulted. Even in marriage, children are not always planned. We have six. We planned one. (Of course we have always loved all 6.)
It does not take long to realize that what occurred as a result of passion takes a very long time to deal with. We must learn to be parents. We must learn how to raise children generally and who our child is specifically. When parents are not willing to learn and grow as parents, they raise flawed human beings. However, if there were no passionate attraction between the sexes there would be very few human beings in the first place. As in all things, balance is the key to life.
Do not let your Christian life be limited to the intellectual understanding of the Word of God. You may learn about God but you will not grow to know him personally. You may know the right things to say, you may act the right way and have an outwardly holy lifestyle, but without a passionate relationship with Jesus, you will have a dry, religious Christianity that will not give you the joy or peace that God promises. There will be very little power in you Christianity.
On the other hand, do not forget the foundation of the Word of God. Judge every experience by the Word. There will be days when you feel nothing, but the Bible will always be there. Sometimes your feelings will lead you off the best path, but the Bible is there to get you back on course.
Find a balance in your life. Always be open to experiential Christianity. Seek to know experientially the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is our right and our responsibility. God created you for relationship and relationship without experience is dead. On the other hand, make the Bible the foundation of everything you do, say and believe in your relationship with the Lord. You cannot go off track that way.
In order to occupy our land of promises we must not dry up or blow up. We must grow up through a healthy balance of both Word and Spirit in our daily Christian experience.
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