Can I Trust My Experience?

A natural reaction is to resist new experiences that challenge our beliefs, especially when they center around what we’ve believed to be true about God. Many of us have gripped our beliefs about God tightly, but then experiences come along and knock up against our truth and loosen our grips. Is that okay?

In Acts 10 Peter took a huge risk and broke what he knew to be God’s law by entering into the home of Gentiles. When others of the early church heard of this, they pushed back against Peter’s new liberal attitude towards truth:

Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.” 4But Peter began and explained it to them… - Acts 11:1-3

Peter’s response is classic. He starts retelling his experience. He doesn’t quote the places in the Old Testament that he could have. He doesn’t quote Jesus, which he could have. Instead, he quotes the Spirit: “What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 11:9).

Did you hear that approach? Instead of first going to scripture Peter instead says he followed the Spirit and that he then trusted his experience of how he saw God at work in the Gentiles. This is a whole new way of following Jesus for those of us used to a more locked down version of Christianity that has constrained our behavior with various moralities pulled from Scripture.

So think some today about where the Spirit is leading you - especially in regards to who the Spirit is leading you to love. As Laura Lacombe pointed out in her message yesterday, the questions that Peter asked and that we get to ask are these:

Is it leading to exclusion or inclusion?

Is it leading to life or death?

Is it denying the work of the Holy Spirit in people?

What leads to the flourishing of all of God’s children?