Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
"Be doers of the word and not merely hearers" implies experience. But what is it to "do" the word? Obey. Not attend meetings and shout slogans, which may or may not be related to the word.
But in today's post-modern, relativistic world it isn't easy to know whether I love, whether I have compassion, whether I have patience and kindness and generosity. I'm good at talking about it...
Ultimately I am left with "seek and you will find." I seek the experience. By God's mercy I may find it.
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I don't think you can truly know what to "do" without the experiencing the Spirit's enlightenment in the first place. I see too many doers of the word operating under their own interpretation. Yes, seeking is important and finding is important. Both in their genuine manifestation are experiences of Christ.
Obviously the LCM distorted experience to the point of error. But that's not a good reason to have a problem with experience itself or with the idea that we need to have it, anymore than the fact that some fraternity guy killed himself by trying to drink 10 gallons of water in 10 minutes should make us hesitant to drink water.
Experience is a general word. So is
know. It's even more general than
experience. But the Bible uses it. Know can mean know information (Gk. oida) or denote personal involvement (Gk. ginosko). The Hebrew word for "to know" is (surprise!)
yada. It implies personal knowledge. When it says "Adam knew his wife" it wasn't talking about him knowing something he read about her. It was talking about a very intimate experience of her.