Experimental Sand: Hey my friend, you probably weren’t expecting a message from me this soon after our phone call, but I didn’t want to just let that conversation drift away. I’m writing because I love you, and because I honestly believe you are in danger of building your spiritual life on the wrong foundation. I say that very seriously, not as someone trying to win an argument, but as someone who would rather speak plainly than keep acting as though it is harmless when a man keeps turning inward and calling it Christianity.
So let me be direct. I tried to say some of this over the phone, but every time I attempted to point you back to Scripture, the conversation seemed to return to experience — to what the Lord told you, how he led you, what you felt, what you sensed, and how you interpreted those things. And that is exactly where I think the trouble lies. If every spiritual conversation keeps coming back to personal experiences, then somewhere along the line the reference point has shifted away from Scripture and away from Christ.
A man can talk all day about what he believes the Lord is showing him, and still never once come to rest in the Christ revealed in the word of God. The issue is not whether those experiences feel real to you. The issue is whether they have subtly taken the place of God’s written testimony. When a man’s spiritual life is built mainly on what he thinks God is saying to him inwardly, rather than on what God has actually said in Scripture concerning his Son, he is standing on sand, no matter how sincere he may be.
The gospel does not direct sinners to make a home out of their own inner life. It does not tell us to keep circling back to our feelings, or even to the strength of our faith. It points us away from ourselves to Christ crucified, to what God has done outside of us and apart from us in the person and work of his Son. That is why I kept trying to point you to the Scriptures. Not because experience means nothing, but because experience is a terrible foundation. Feelings change. Impressions can be wrong. Religious excitement can be mistaken for spiritual life. A man can be deeply moved, deeply sincere, and deeply mistaken at the same time. But the testimony of God concerning Christ does not move.
If our Christianity is mostly an account of what we feel, what we sense, and what we think God is doing inside of us, rather than a resting in what God has already accomplished in Christ, then we have wandered far from the simplicity that is in Christ. MPJ