EXPERIENCE

Believers these days have come to think life transformation is attained thru external experiences. Many churches have gone to great lengths to manufacture these experiences for their religious consumers. Millions of Christ-followers trudge up the mountain every Sunday desiring an experience with God, which is precisely what the church promises.

The problem with these external experiences is that the glory fades so fast. By the time Monday comes, or even Sunday lunch, the event you were certain would change your life forever, turns out to be one more fleeting spiritual high.

This philosophy creates worship junkies - believers who leap from one mountaintop experience to the next - one spiritual high to the next - from weekend sermon to radio worship to TV messages - in search of a glory that does not fade. Ironically, these experiences are often failing to produce real worshippers.

What we are risking is making people experience-dependent. We lose the ability to do what we were designed to do - worship God in a vibrant, self-generating relationship with Christ. Instead, they find themselves dependent on their zookeeper-pastors for life and nourishment. As long as the captive and the captor are both satisfied with that arrangement, it is unlikely it will change.

But this marvelous transformation is not done except by the inner working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. It is not done from the 'outside-in,' but from the 'inside-out.' We no longer worship the Father on a mountain or in the Temple, but in SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH - by embracing a divine mystery - 'Christ IN you, the hope of glory.'

Let it be.

And be blessed.