Spiritual experience and God’s word
by Pastor Joshua Pfeiffer
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Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel (Acts 2:15,16).
Have you ever had an unusual experience as part of your Christian life and not known quite what to do with it? People have dreams, intuitions and promptings, and it happens more often than some may realise.
How are we to think about the place of spiritual experience in our Christian life? People can be tempted to treat their experience as the most important thing of all, even if it calls into question aspects of God’s revealed will in the Bible. Others can be suspect of all spiritual experience and would relegate it only to the realm of subjective emotional response. Yet when we turn to the Scriptures, we indeed find extraordinary spiritual experiences occurring but always being tested and interpreted by the word of God.
A classic example is the well-known day of Pentecost itself. The gathered disciples experience ‘a sound like the rush of a violent wind’, ‘divided tongues, as of fire’, and the ability ‘to speak in other languages’ (verses 1–4). These were the phenomena that attended the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, and it was indeed an extraordinary spiritual experience for those gathered.
Yet, notice the experience itself was not enough. Everyone responds by saying, ‘what does this mean?’ (verse 12). Others around them concluded they were drunk! To interpret the extraordinary events, the Apostle Peter directs the community to the word of God, in this case, from the prophet Joel. It’s when their experience is brought under the authority of this revealed word that it finds its proper place and meaning.
And how does this word interpret the miraculous events of Pentecost? It points them to Christ, as the work of the Spirit always does. All the extraordinary and marvellous signs of the Spirit’s coming at Pentecost were to serve this end, that many more would call on the name of the Lord, and so be saved (verse 20).
Heavenly Father, I’m not always sure what to make of the strange experiences I and others I know have in our lives of faith. Help me, by your Spirit, to interpret them by your word to us in the Bible. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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