Experience

When I go on business trips I tend to miss my family quite a bit. Unlike others in my office, I don't enjoy being away from them. Sometimes while I'm gone I get opportunities to see different attractions such as beaches or museums, but I don't really enjoy these things like I do when Susie is with me. Experiencing new things just isn't the same without her.

To help with the loneliness I suppose I could go to the bookstore and read about marriages or how to best raise a family - I could read stories about good marriages and that kind of thing. I could even memorize passages of the books so I could recall them later. It would actually be really helpful and useful. I would grow a lot in my understanding of marriage, I would learn what makes marriages work well, what good marriages look like, who I am as a husband, how to be a good husband & father and that kind of thing. I would be sowing into my marriage.

But, calling Susie on the phone is way better. The bookstore would be great and it's filled with great truths, but Susie is my wife - not a subject. I would much rather spend time with her than read about her. Better yet, have her come with me to the bookstore. Susie is my focus, not her biography. I need to stay attentive because sometimes she says things and does things that are not written in the marriage book. She never contradicts the marriage book, she just gives me fresh content to work with.

See, marriage is a dynamic relationship, not a doctrine or a statement of faith. The Bible says this is how we should relate to God - "in Spirit and in truth." Relationships can be messy - even unpredictable at times - but they have no substitute. If faith becomes predictable, it's a good indication we are falling out of relationship. Without spending time with one another, relationships become dysfunctional. Dry. Dead. It’s not only what God said yesterday, it’s what God is saying today. God is a relational being – He didn’t speak out the words of the Bible and then zip His mouth shut – He allows us to experience Himself. It’s an ongoing, experiential relationship. That’s what the Holy Spirit is all about.

Yet, especially in our western post-enlightenment culture where scientific rationalism is emphasized and experience is downplayed as too "subjective", we throw the baby out with the bathwater. We throw out the relationship as being too messy - too unpredictable. We prefer to read about our Spouse instead of interact with His Spirit because it's more comfortable and familiar to us. We haven't learned how to use all the features of our spiritual phones so we stay in the bookstore. After all, “those Holy Spirit folks are too weird and unpredictable. They believe in all that weird relational stuff – the stuff the marriage book talks about. Just give me the book keep it to an hour." Yet ironically, it's only through experience that we truly come to know someone.

One of my favorite passages of Scripture is Matthew 9:17 where Jesus talks about how we need to put new wine into new wineskins. Basically what He is saying is that new batches of wine will expand as it ferments in its container and burst the old wineskin (container). So, we need to put new wine into new wineskins which are still flexible enough to handle the expansion – kind of like filling a water balloon. Essentially what this means for us is that God is going to stretch us, and if we are not flexible we will burst. That’s why Jesus chewed out the Pharisees so much – they were rigid Bible thumpers who closed themselves off to fresh moves of God. They claimed to be all about God’s Word while ignoring the heart of what He said. Jesus didn’t fit into their small boxes of understanding – He broke their wineskins.

May we always leave room for new wine. May we always remain flexible and respect what God is saying and doing through others. God has billions of intimate relationships going on right now and He has lots to say to each one of us. May we pick up our spiritual phone and ask the Holy Spirit how to use it – all the features – even if it seems a little weird at first.