Do Not Be Ashamed of the Feelings Associated with Experiential Religion

[This is no reference to the emotionalism of some of the Charismatics, but vital godliness, and experimental religion should be one of feeling and emotions and conflicts in those things or there is nothing to overcome, and one is left with a formal, dead faith. Jesus felt--Jesus Wept]

To talk about Christian Experience is, by some people considered little short of enthusiasm. To try to enlist the affections on the side of Christianity is by others deemed extravagance. In their view, the sober-minded Christian is one who attends to the duties of his station, is a strict observer of religious ordinances, and distributes of his substance to the poor and needy. To speak to them about the corruption of the heart, the inward conflict, the power of faith, the energy of love, the work of the Spirit, the grace of the Savior, is like talking about an unknown religion.
It was not so with the blessed Paul. He could say, “I know the one in whom I trust.” He was taught of God to know, by sweet experience, the efficacy of Christ’s atonement, the sufficiency of his grace, and the prevalency of his intercession. His ardent desire was “to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means he might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.”

With such declarations of the Apostles, recorded in the Sacred Scriptures for our encouragement and pursuit after holiness, we need not be ashamed of Experimental Religion. The world’s shame is the Christian’s glory.

I am now a pilgrim journeying through the wilderness. The manna is daily descending; and the water of life continually flowing to sustain and refresh me. Jesus, the true bread from heaven, is freely given; the Holy Spirit, as a living stream, is graciously supplied from the fountain of eternal love. Oh! how great is the goodness, truth, and mercy, of my covenant God, Father, Son, and Spirit, to an unworthy worm of the earth. Lord, make me grateful. Give me a believing and a loving heart. Preserve me from self-will and self-seeking; from selfsufficiency and self-pleasing. Mold my will into yours; and enable me in all things to seek your glory.
Guide me, O great Jehovah, in safety through this desert-land. Shield me by your power. Cheer me with your presence. Uphold my goings in your way. Let me not turn aside into crooked paths; nor dread any danger, while in the path of duty. Keep me as the apple of your eye. Hide me under the shadow of your wings. Impart that spiritual illumination which will direct me aright; that spiritual strength, which will enable me to endure unto the end; that assurance of faith, which will animate me to the conflict; and that experience of your love, which will support me under every trial, and cause me to die, rather than deny you before men. O grant these inestimable blessings, for your own mercy and truth’s sake; for you, O Lord, alone are the God of my salvation.
—Thomas Reade ‘The Believer’s Companion in Solitude’

 

The Value of Experiential Knowledge

We know so much of divine truth, my reader, as we have in a measure a personal experience of it in our souls. The mere speculatist and notionalist in religion is as unsatisfactory and unprofitable as the mere theorist and declaimer in science. For all practical purposes, both are but ciphers.
The character and the degree of our spiritual knowledge, begins and terminates in our knowledge of Christ. Christ is the test of its reality — the measure of its depth — and the source of its growth.
If you are advancing in an experimental, sanctifying acquaintance with the Lord Jesus, you are advancing in that knowledge which Paul thus estimates, “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.” Dear reader, let the chief object of your study be to know the Lord Jesus. It may be in the region of your sinfulness, emptiness, weakness, and foolishness — that you learn Him. Nevertheless, however humiliating the school, slow the progress, and limited the attainment, count every fresh step you make in a personal acquaintance with the Lord Jesus — as a nobler triumph, and as bringing you into the possession of more real wealth than were the whole chests of human knowledge and science mastered, and its untold treasures poured at your feet!
When adversity comes — when death approaches — when eternity unveils — oh! how indescribably valuable, how inconceivably precious will then be one faith’s touch, one faith’s glimpse of a crucified and risen Savior! All other attainments then vanish, and the only knowledge that abides, soothes, and comforts — is a heartfelt acquaintance with the most sublime fact of the Gospel — that Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Oh! Whatever other studies may engage your thoughts, do not forget, as you value your eternal destiny, to study the Lord Jesus Christ!
—Octavius Winslow