Why me, Lord? Why wasn’t I better at sports as a kid? Why weren’t my legs just a little longer, or my reflexes just a little quicker? Why was I consistently one of the last guys picked for teams during gym class?

Why do I get to be so healthy at 55? How come I can hop on my bike and ride twenty miles? Why do I get to be able to continue to take rugged wilderness trips? Why can I still do these things when so many people my age can’t?

Why me, Lord? Why do I get to be so healthy?

Why me, Lord? Why do I have to struggle with being overweight? Why do I have seasonal depression so that in the winter it requires superhuman self discipline not to eat sweets?

Why couldn’t I have lived as most of my ancestors lived, where famine was a fact of life? Why couldn’t I have lived with a life long fear of bad weather? Why couldn’t I have lived when just a little too much or too little rain at the wrong time would mean that we would face hunger? Why couldn’t I have lived in a time when two years of bad weather meant famine?

Why have I never had to listen to my children cry themselves to sleep at night because they were living on the knife’s edge of starvation? Why haven’t I felt the humiliation of and despair of a “breadwinner,” who had to watch his children turn into skin and bones before his very eyes in a situation where there was nothing, absolutely nothing, I could do about it?

Why me, Lord? Why do I always have enough to eat?

Why me, Lord?

How come I have never been able to have a brand new car?

Why do I have the freedom, and the prosperity, to travel 2,000 miles every summer, just because I like to go backpacking in the Rockies? Why do I get to cruise along, in air conditioned comfort, listening to perfectly reproduced music, sitting on a car seat that is probably more comfortable than any piece of furniture my ancestors ever owned? Why do I get to fly along the ground at 75 miles an hour, covering more distance in an hour than people used to be able to travel in a week?

Why do my wife and I get to own two cars when in many places of the world people have to use motor scooters or animal powered transportation? Why do I get to own a bicycle with 18 gears that is used strictly for recreation and exercise, when many people in the third world can’t afford a bicycle that would be their only mode of transportation?

Why me, Lord?

Lessons from Jonathan’s Edward’s Spiritual Journey, Part 9

What then can we learn about these spiritual experiences.

1. In our day, we only expect to have one or two spiritual experiences. The first is conversion and the second is referred to as either being filled with the Spirit or being baptized in the Spirit.
2. Only one of the experiences in the previous posts deals with a conversion event. None of the rest of them seem to fit into our modern conceptions of the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
3. In almost all of these experiences, the experience began with a truth from God's word. The emotions were a response to the truth.
4. When Jesus promised the coming of the Holy Spirit, He did so in reference to the Spirit's work of teaching the believer. John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7-11, 13-15.
5. In modern evangelical circles, there is not too much expectation of these kinds of dynamic experiences of the Holy Spirit in His teaching ministry.
6. In modern charismatic circles, there is an expectation that when the Spirit moves there will manifestations of tongues, healing, and deeply emotional experiences.
7. A better Scriptural perspective would be to expect people to have a deep, life changing revelation of the truth of God's word when the Holy Spirit moves.
8. As Christians we should be open to such experiences. In fact, we should even be praying for them. Jonathan Edwards explanation (see part 8) of these phenomena give us a Biblical basis for such expectations.
   
9. Our great safeguard from deception in these experiences is the connection between a deeper understanding of the truth and our emotional response to it. We should be suspicious of any deeply emotional experience that does not include a deeper understanding of some facet of Biblical revelation.
   

Lessons from Jonathan’s Edward’s Spiritual Journey, Part 8

When opposition to the revivals broke out, one of the chief criticisms was of the emotional nature of the experiences many people were having. Edwards answered the critics by referring to certain “expressions in Scripture – ‘The peace that passeth all understanding; rejoicing with joy unspeakable and full of glory, in believing in and loving and unseen Savior; all joy and peace in believing. God’s shining into our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, and being changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord; having the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given to us; having the Spirit of God and of glory rest upon us.” (pg. 245)

Lessons from Jonathan’s Edward’s Spiritual Journey, Part 7

Edward's daughter Ester was married to Aaron Burr, a minister who died in his early 40’s, leaving her a widow. Shortly thereafter, her infant son Aaron went down with an infection and was presumed to be dying. In the midst of this turmoil, Ester had a remarkable encounter with God. (Note the similarities to her mother’s experience previously recorded.) “One evening, in talking about the glorious state my dear departed husband must be in, my soul was carried out in such large desires after that glorious state, that I was forced to retire from the family to conceal my joy. When alone, I was so transported, and my soul carried out in such eager desires after perfection and the full enjoyment of God, and to serve him uninterruptedly, that I think nature could not have borne much more. I think … that I had that night a foretaste of heaven. This frame continued, in some good degree, the whole night. I slept but little, and when I did, my dreams were all of heavenly and divine things.”

Lessons from Jonathan’s Edward’s Spiritual Journey, Part 6

Some of the spiritual experiences Edwards reported were painful, although they were ultimately helpful in his spiritual growth and development. “”I have had very affecting views of my own sinfulness and vileness; very frequently to such a degree as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping, sometimes for a considerable time together; so that I have often been forced to shut myself up (retire to some private place). I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness, and the badness of my heart, than ever I had before my conversion. It has often appeared to me that … I should appear the very worst of all mankind – of all that have been, since the beginning of the world to this time, and that I should have by far the lowest place in hell … I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me to be than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite.” (pg. 101)

Lessons from Jonathan’s Edward’s Spiritual Journey, Part 5

Another experience that Edwards had: “Once, as I rode out into the woods for my health, in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God, as Mediator between God and man, and his wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace of love, and meek and gentle condescension. This grace that appeared so calm and sweet, appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception – which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour; which kept me the great part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated; to lie in the dust, and to be full of Christ alone; to love Him with a holy and pure love; to truth in Him; to live upon Him; to serve and follow Him; and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure, with a divine and heavenly purity. I have, several other times, had views very much of the same nature, and which have had the same effects.” (pg. 100)

Lessons from Jonathan’s Edward’s Spiritual Journey, Part 4

Many years later, Mrs. Edwards had an experience that she recorded in her journal. “These words, in Rom. 8:34, came into my mind. ‘Who is he who condemneth; it is Christ that died; yea rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of god, who also maketh intercession for us.’” Note that the entire experience began with a thought, with a Bible doctrine. She said that the thought expressed in this verse “occasioned great sweetness and delight in my soul. But when I was alone, the words came to my mind with far greater power and sweetness. They appeared to me with undoubted certainty as the words of God, and as words which God did pronounce concerning me … I cannot find language to express how certain this appeared … Melted by the sweetness of this assurance, I fell into a great flow of tears … The presence of god was so near and so real that I seemed scarcely conscious of anything else … The peace and happiness, which I hereupon felt, was altogether inexpressible. I seemed to be lifted above earth and hell, out of the reach of everything here below.” (pgs. 194, 195)

Lessons from Jonathan’s Edward’s Spiritual Journey, Part 3

Edwards wrote this description of the woman who was to become his wife in a journal. Edwards was twenty; the girl was thirteen years old.

“They say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of that Great Being who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or another invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything, except to meditate on him … she is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness and universal benevolence of mind; specially after this great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what.” (pg. 99)

Lessons from Jonathan’s Edward’s Spiritual Journey, Part 2

The Tozer quote was a setup for series of posts from Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography, by Ian Murray. I was fascinated by the variety of spiritual experiences described as I read the book. We'll start with Edwards account of his conversion experience (These are my paraphrases. Edwars actual language is probably more difficult to read and understand than the King James Bible.)

He had just read 1 Tim. 1:17 (“Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever.”) Edwards wrote that “as I read the words, my whole soul was suddenly filled with the presence of God and His glory. I had never experiencend anything like this before. The words of this Bible verse hit me with a strange sene of power. I found myself thinking of the glory of God and I realized that it was only in His presence that we could experience true joy. I wanted to be so close to Him, so aware of His presence. I longed to be in heaven where I could dive deeply into the sea of God's love and stay there forever."

"I began to experience, from time to time, the presence of God. It was as if, all of a sudden, this passionate intense longing for God would come to life in my soul. It was like a fire. I had a desire to be with Him that was so intense that I couldn't find the words to describe it."

“God was becoming more and more real to me and this filled me with unspeakable joy. The way I looked at life changed dramtically. I began to have a continuous sense of the presence of God and an ongoing experience of a deep inner peace. It seemed as if I could see the glory of God whenever I looked at His creation.”

Lessons from Jonathan’s Edward’s Spiritual Journey, Part 1

“Christianity is a gateway into God. And then when you get into god, ‘with Christ in God,’ then you’re on a journey into infinity, into infinitude. There is no limit and no place to stop. There isn’t just one work of grace, or a second work or a third work, and then that’s it. There are numberless experiences and spiritual epoch and crises that can take place in your life while you are journeying out into the heart of God in Christ.” (Tozer on the Almighty God, April 3 reading)