Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
. . . God dispensing Himself into us as grace, peace, love, and so many other precious things which our Heavenly Father has for His children.
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We have all experienced it. And so have most of those mooing cows that we now wander among in Christianity.
The problem is that God does this because he does it, not because we learn a better doctrine and are now qualified to have an experience of it.
In fact, sometimes I think that so many of the things that we "experienced" were less real than the reality that Christ was in us whether we knew it or not. That Christ acted on our behalf whether we had Lee's teaching on it or not. Those that pray are seeking and knocking. They will find and will have the door opened. It will not be special for those who have high-peak theology.
In short, I think that our "experience" — at least while in the LRC — was more a matter of working ourselves up with the expectation that this was what it was all about. We sang and declared that feelings were nothing, yet we point to our feelings as the thing we miss. In fact, I think it is the feelings of getting more than what we got that we are pointing back to now. Not saying we aren't or weren't getting anything. But we were busy pointing at something else.
The feelings are our leeks and garlic of Egypt. Those multitudes marching across the desert didn't have a lot of feeling after a while. Oh, they enjoyed the rush of being saved through the Red Sea. But that obviously didn't last. They were grumbling for the leeks and garlic of Egypt in no time. Yet God was with them in the desert, not back in Egypt with the leeks and garlic.
They sing "the feelings do not change the fact . . ." but the surely let their feelings rule the day. If they don't feel it, they don't believe it. So they have to feel something. I just wonder what it is they feel.
Let's face it, those in the LRC are not getting more grace, peace, love, etc., than those elsewhere. That is yet another myth we need to tear down. Things were not superior there. We were taught how to feel superior there. We were taught how to get a feeling and call it something special.
Mean time, God is busy giving grace, peace, and love to many more than the few in the LRC. Our experience of God's peace, grace and love may have been real (at least in a sense), but the thing that we called God's peace, grace, and love may not be the thing that we actually got from God. In the LRC is was accompanied by something we pointed to as some special sense. We got excited about it. Maybe, just maybe, that was not actually the peace, grace, and love. Not saying we didn't get any. But ths thing we point to may have been a misdirection.
For a group that is taught to think poorly of charismatic theology and practice, the LRC is very caught-up in having semi-charismatic experiences to keep them going. Find a way to remove enough of the sort of mob mentality that they get into in the meetings and it will wither. Unfortunately, it will mostly wither back to normality, but they will be experiencing a kind of withdrawal and be sure that they have been abandoned by God. (And the cry will go out, once again, for the leeks and garlic of the LRC.)