Lack of Testimony = Lack of Life or Lack of Love

Ever been in church when the congregation is asked to share testimonies, and all you hear is the sound of crickets chirping? How is it that Christians can have no spiritual experience of God to share with each other? I’ve been in that situation plenty of times. I start scouring my brain for some truth, some idea, some encouragement to share, but nothing comes to mind. I usually feel kind of guilty that I can’t think of anything, and so I should! Not having something of a spiritual nature to share with others at church means I either have a lack of spiritual life, or a lack of spiritual love.

If I had experienced real spiritual life throughout the week, I’d have a testimony to share. The problem is, I lived like an atheist during the week. I hardly gave God a thought. I didn’t relate my experiences to him. I wasn’t reading or meditating on his Word. So I have no spiritual testimony to share because I spent the whole week focused on earthly things. “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,” (Col. 3:2), and you will always have a testimony with which to encourage others.

Or it may be that I did experience God during the week. I thought about how he related to what I was going through. I read the Bible and meditated on it. But I just don’t have a very good memory. I forget things. I just can’t remember my experience of God in the past week, so I have nothing to share with others. But what I would like to blame on my poor memory is actually evidence of a lack of love for my brothers and sisters in Christ. The fact that I didn’t take steps to make sure I remembered my spiritual experience shows that I had no thought for how I could be a spiritual encouragement to the family of believers. The building up of the body, and how I could contribute to that building up, was not on my mind. I was not thinking about how I could serve others spiritually, and that is not loving.

Lord, forgive me for living like an atheist during the week. Forgive me for not loving the church. Help me to change!

Do-able Christianity

It occurred to me recently as I studied 1 Corinthians 13 and thought about many of the sermons I have heard over the years that Christians who have a tendency toward legalism sometimes express it by sucking the emotions out of every virtue. Joy and happiness are defined as two completely different things, so that joy is reduced to peace or hope. Faith is said to have nothing to do with one’s feelings and is reduced to believing Gospel facts to be true. Love is said to be an action (which is true), not an emotion (which is not true). Fear of God is said to be respect or reverence, not actual fear. So one can have joy with no happiness, faith with no heart, love with no affection, and fear with no uneasiness. You can be a miserable person, but as long as you don’t deny Christ you can claim to be joyful. You can have no emotional reaction to the cross of Christ, but as long as you believe it to be true, you have faith. You can despise someone, but as long as you act good to them, you have love. As long as you behave biblically, you’re okay.

Could it be that this Christian behaviorism is nothing more than an attempt to make Christianity do-able without the Holy Spirit? I can see how legalism would push in that direction. I can’t change my heart, but I can choose to act certain ways, so I’ll define Christianity exclusively in terms of decisions of the will rather than affections of the heart. Give me the list of rules and I’ll keep them, but don’t ask me to have affection for someone I dislike. I can’t just decide to do that.

In fact, I’ve often heard preachers say, “God would never command us to do something that we can’t do!” Meaning, God would never ask us to change our emotions, because we can’t seem to do that by an act of the will. I say the exact opposite: “God never asks us to do anything that we can do.” Meaning, we cannot obey any of Christ’s commands without the Holy Spirit working in us. Legalism seems to want to make the Christian life naturally possible, whereas Scripture makes the Christian life naturally impossible. That is precisely why we need something supernatural in order to live it. I need the Spirit of God to work powerfully in my heart so that my emotions are stirred and enlivened in God-honoring ways. What is the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, humility, moderation? Sounds like pretty emotional stuff.

On this topic, I highly recommend Jonathan Edwards’ book, The Religious Affections, in which he establishes that true Christianity consists largely in the emotions (affections), enumerates things that don’t indicate one way or the other that your spirituality is genuine, and describes how to recognize true, grace-prompted emotions.