Lightning flashed through a window lighting the room for a split second before the darkness returned you to the bliss of ignorance. During this brief illumination, you caught a glimpse of an object, marvelous and complex, and you felt you were given a gift but you don't know why you felt this way as you barely saw it, yet you felt filled with awe.
You played the image over in your mind, you turned to face in the direction you thought the object was in and waited for the lightning again. After some time you convinced yourself that the lightning was finished and you realised that you wouldn't be able to see the object again, at least not for a while.
You went back to the business of living but you felt that something profound had happened and you just couldn't put it from your mind. You bit the bullet and talked to someone about your experience, they too felt the excitement. You pushed at the memory and your recall began to improve and you remembered more details, the most profound was that the item was, in fact, a chair, a chair with 4 legs and a plain looking seat and back.
The feeling of reverence grows and you start talking to more people until someone drops the bomb, they have had the same experience. You compare notes but work out quickly that what they saw was not the same thing you did, for one, you saw a chair, they saw a colourful stool, 4 legs but no back. It is not long before you meet others who have had a similar experience, some have little details to describe but the feeling they express about the experience is so similar to yours you KNOW they are somehow linked, yet others have various levels of details to provide.
It isn't long before someone you spoke to, spreads the word of your experience and people are now seeking you out to hear of your experience. You are not known for exaggeration or embellishment so you diligently describe your experience whenever asked.
One day someone bails you up about your description and tells you that you are wrong. They had an experience too and theirs was much more profound and so much more detail was made known to them and their experience CLEARLY proves that you are wrong in your interpretation of what you remember seeing. This person describes the item as LIKE a chair, like you remembered, but it only had 2 legs, a seat and a back. Suddenly you begin to question your experience but your faith is bolstered because some of the group of people who previously followed the other guy, they prefer yours.
Well, this is unacceptable to the other person who starts telling people that his experience is the correct one and you have just been hearing stories, second and third hand stories, and are just making stuff up based on hearsay. He challenges you but he is a fantastic storyteller and his words are mesmerizing and you walk away despondent again.
Years later you get another experience and this time what you see is so different from the first that you are even more confused than before you started. NO FEAR, it is a chair, not a stool but this time the seat was colourful and it only had 1 leg but a very ornate back.
The feeling of reverence grows again but suddenly, like a lightning strike it hits you, every description you have heard over the years all describe the same item, just seen from different angles.
God reveals himself to us in a myriad of ways, but each of us can only see part of the wholeness of God and only from where we are in our personal journey.
While this is not an Earth-shattering revelation to many we need to remember that if I had an experience it was personal and INCOMPLETE.
Should I proclaim myself as a prophet and start telling my story many will follow my directions and will all stand, looking in the same direction that I was looking and see nothing other than what I saw. Now, if they were exactly where I was at that time, in every respect, they are in with a fair chance of sharing my experience IF it should happen again but if they were not where I was when they see something, when they have their own experience, they may discount that experience as not the real thing because that was not the right direction and was not the right size / shape / colour as I described.
Religions have been doing this for forever, few religions are not guilty of the "I am right and the others are wrong" mentality and this is evidenced in the doctrines they espouse.
Religions were created by men, not God. God allows, perhaps even encourages, diversity in our religions BECAUSE he knows that if there was only 1 truth and 1 method for telling that truth, religions would be interesting and of value to about 5% of us all. Some people like churches full of education and study, some just like to sing and feel God's presence. Others feel the need to send missionaries overseas to help those in other cultures learn about God, some keep it closer to home and work to feed, clothe and support the needy.
Many religions have missed their purpose. some try to "buy a spot in heaven" by bringing more people to God, others try to impress men with the size of their following, some have the specific purpose of creating or maintaining riches or power.
Personally, I don't think there could be a sadder way to end a life than to have lived a life of absolute diligence and faith to someone else's truth, someone else's glimpse. To end your journey never having had the opportunity to have your own experience yourself because you were told how God would make himself known to you, so you ignored everything else. And when your personal 'hello' from God did come, it came differently, came at a time and in a way that was just meant for you and missed your own personal meeting with God.
Faith should never be solemn, hard or obligatory, it should be a joyous experience full of excitement and anticipation. When you are looking for some else's dream, you may well miss your own.
The bible tells us that no individual can look upon the face of God and live (loose translation) and I feel that our minds and experience are limited to 3-dimensional space and 1-dimensional time for the safety of ourselves and the entirety of God's creation.
I feel deeply that God is doing everything to help us to make the decision to come home and providing us with all the knowledge we need to get there but there are none among us that are worthy of the whole picture.
Jesus gave us a few short years of teaching but millennia of understanding but we have not come together in that knowledge we have bastardized his words and teachings and personalized them to fit our personal agendas and goals.
Before we can fully understand even the basic concepts about our creator we need to bring all of our knowledge together and piece together a coherent truth, not a coherent religion, religion still needs to be a place to recharge and needs to be the right one for each individual for where they are right now. Religions need to stop saying I am right and others are wrong and, instead, say come and learn some of our beliefs and then go away and learn from the others too.
My personal experience was a miraculous healing, medically documented but it raised more questions than it answered, I knew after my experience that God existed and he cared for me, individually and personally.
The experience for my Pastor was to have initiated this healing, and then to have done it again, and again for several others.
I have spoken to people whose experience was nothing more than having the holy spirit enter them yet they have been forever changed.
One of my inspirations was a lady who felt compelled to buy a cold drink for a man doing some gardening and having him say thanks, but she knew.
Each of these is unique and personal, I have never had the experience of healing another nor the feeling of being overwhelmed by the holy spirit and while, in the eyes of men, some of these experiences are "greater" than others I am sure in the eyes of God, they are all the right experience at the right time for the person who had them.
Don't dedicate your life to trying to heal others or buying cool drinks for strangers or getting sick and praying for healing, simply SHUT UP and listen, He will tell you what you need to do, you just need to listen and be ready to act. See Luke 9:59-62
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The Chair
SpiritualA flash of light illuminates a room and one believer sees a glimpse of God. A blessing or a curse depending on what he does with his gift. We need to stop thinking that we know it all