Knowing vs Experiencing

I’m a bit of a nerd. For example, growing up I loved to read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. When the second film, The Two Towers, came to theaters, I saw it right around 20 times. Yeah, crazy. But see – I was so excited. I spent so much time in spaces where I could know a lot about this movie, but to finally experience it, was incredible for my teenage self. And no amount of blogs or trailers or HD screen grabs or director journals compared to experiencing the same thing.

But you see – for a lot of us, we settle for spaces where we know something and never ask the question of whether we have experienced something. The Bible isn’t just so we can know God, it’s so we can be moved to spaces to experience God. God isn’t just for our past, just for our Sunday but can be experienced in our day to day.

The big question we need to ask ourselves: do we experience Jesus in our day to day or do we just go to church once a week to remind ourselves we know Him?

The past Sunday we began a series called Truth and Lies in our Sunday student gathering. The main point was that Jesus is the best thing we could ever experience. Note: not the best thing we could ever know, but the best we could ever experience.

We live in a day and age where we are overloaded with information, the young generation doesn’t need a space to know more about Jesus, they need space to experience Jesus. They need to hear your stories of how the Spirit is living and active in your day to day life.

Grandparents: do you share stories with your children and grandchildren of how Jesus has and is actively transforming you?

Parents: do you just recite verses as facts to get a result or do you talk about how you’ve experienced the goodness of Jesus?

We can know a lot of things about something without belonging, but it is experience that draws us into commitment. 

If we never talk about how we’ve experienced the truths of God’s word, it shouldn’t shock us that a generation wants nothing to do with what appears to them as knowledge in a subject very unreal. But what happens when we move to help them experience the Good News of Jesus Christ? When we say: this is how God has been faithful to us. This is how God has been true. This is how God has been Rescuer. This is how God has been Trustworthy. This is how God has been Just. This is how God has been Holy. This is why Jesus is worthy – not just of my knowledge, but of everything and anything I experience.

We forget when we don’t make space to remind ourselves Jesus isn’t just worth knowing, he’s the best thing we could ever experience. May today be that day we stop trying to just know Jesus, but that we seek to experience Him in every storm, in every season, in every moment. Because the experience is so much better than any amount of knowledge.