The Problem With Deceit #2: "But I Experienced It!"

Deceit runs rampant in our world today and Satan continually uses it to rip apart God’s design in the wickedest ways. To make it worse, most people and even many Christians fail to recognize the rampant deceit and repeatedly fall for the counterfeits. “The Problem With Deceit” aims to tackle this problem head on and to provide a biblical counter to these counterfeits.

In this second installment of “The Problem With Deceit”, I will be addressing the lie that “experience is an authoritative teacher”. This installment is a quasi-furtherment of the previous installment entitled “Follow Your Heart”, so please consider checking the previous out to get a better perspective of what is being said. But without further ado, lets discuss experience.

Lie #2 – “But I Experienced It!”

Experience is a beautiful thing. The way that God uses it to teach and correct is incredible, and the Bible displays His use of it consistently. Whether it was the Jews’ experience of being thrown into captivity and then rescued over and over again (see 2 Kings 24-25), the Egyptians seeing each of their gods crumble through the ten plagues (see Exodus 7-11), or the disciples witnessing each of Christ’s miracles (see any of the Gospels), God has used experience to show His power and display His love. Not only that, but our lives are made up of experiences. We experience food, warmth, sunshine, love, hate, gravity, friendship, singing… Our experiences can shape our perspectives, form our passions, and give life a splendor worth living for.

Truthfully, this is where the beauty of experience ends, but modern culture and progressive Christians tend to disregard the limitations of it. It has gotten to the point where Christians and non-believers alike use their experiences to validate their broken doctrine and to overrule hard, biblical truth. This overemphasis of experience is posing major problems for Christ’s Church and is creating further division as many have begun reinventing what God says in scripture.

Didn’t I just say that God uses experience to teach and correct? Yes, I did. But God never contradicts Himself, and the issue with this modern overemphasis is that people’s experiential conclusions often contradict God’s Word and Christ’s authority (see Matthew 28:18), which leads me to say that these conclusions are not exactly “God sponsored”.

How do people come to these broken conclusions?

Put simply, our experiences are tainted and altered by our hearts. When this happens, our experiences quickly become deceptive and “pull the wool over our eyes” to what is actually happening (see Jeremiah 17:9). The emotions and desires that are in our hearts (which tend to follow sin nature) are usually the culprit of these alterations. People come to the wrong conclusions the moment they allow these sin-driven catalysts to modify what God has purposefully said.

Ok, then why does God use experiences to teach if our deceitful sin natures are just going to mess it all up?

God uses experiences to solidify what He teaches through His Word. See, God often teaches us through the wisdom and knowledge of what His Word has to say first, because He knows that we will never rightly comprehend what we are experiencing until we have listened to what He has to say. Let me give you an example:

Mark 5:25-34 NKJV

Now a certain woman had a flow of blood for twelve years, and had suffered many things from many physicians. She had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came behind Him in the crowd and touched His garment. For she said, “If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well.” Immediately the fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of the affliction. And Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that power had gone out of Him, turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” But His disciples said to Him, “You see the multitude thronging You, and You say, ‘Who touched me?’” And He looked around to see her who had done this thing. But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him and told Him the whole truth. And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.”

The woman started with the truth of Christ’s healing power and through faith acted upon that truth. Then, and only then, did she experience true life-changing power. God knew of her faithful belief in Him and His Truth and brought her to a place to further solidify it in her life through the experience of meeting Christ. She was not a hearer of the Word only, but also a doer, and because of that God blessed her through a powerful experience that aligned with His design (see James 1:22).

So, what is the place of experience in our lives?

Experience’s place in life is solidifying and glorifying God’s design in the way that He intended and revealed through His Word.

However, experience can never change what scripture clearly says, regardless of how legitimate we think those experiences were or are.

The way that we perceive and live things will always fluctuate depending on our sin nature. Frequently those experiences can deceive us into believing a lie or cause us to think something occurred but actually never did. Yet, the Bible will always align with Christ and His truth. We can bank on that.

The Blunt (Brace yourself)

Stop allowing your experiences (experiences fluctuated by your broken, fickle feelings and desires) to change what Scripture says. God’s Word is final and above anything we can ever experience.

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Sources and Inspiration

"The Counter Punch: A Study in the Boxing Brilliance of the Most High God" by Eric Ludy at the Church at Ellerslie in Windsor, Colorado. Can be found at: The Rescue of a Nation Sermon Series (ellerslie.com)

"Discovering God's Moral Compass #9: Politics and Religion Part 2 (Duet. 18:1-22)" by Dave Graef at Heritage Baptist Church in Kentwood, Michigan. Can be found at: Discovering God's Moral Compass #9 politics & Religion Pt. 2 Deut. 18:1-22 HBC Kentwood 1/24/21 - YouTube