What I
Believe------------------------------------------------------What I've
Experienced

The Spiritual Reality Gap

We're an educated but cynical society. We read a lot about the power and intimacy of God, but live lives that give no evidence of his majesty or tenderness. The reality of our experience can't support the weight\ of what we say we believe. Over time, something has to
give. I call this gulf between belief and experience the Spiritual Reality Gap.

I was raised as a good Evangelical. Basically, we Evangelicals are agnostic about God pouring out his supernatural power thru us. Because our teachers have so little experience with the miraculous, they don't talk about it, and some (John McArthur comes to mind) even have the gall to construct a theology to support their lack of experience. Never mind that if they would just buy a ticket to Mozambique, they could talk to dozens of people who have seen the dead raised.

So, I have to ask myself the question that many in this current generation are asking, "When do we get to do the stuff?" Jesus promised us in John 14:12, that we'd do even greater things than he did, so how do we live out the reality of that verse? How do we close the gap between that promise and our own experience?

My own response to the Spiritual Reality Gap in my life has been to throw myself out there and hang out with people for whom the gap has narrowed. If you talk big but are like the Texan who is "all hat and no cattle," then I'll politely ask you to move along.

And I think young people today are with me on this. They are sick to death of the Spiritual Reality Gap and will do almost anything to close it. I'm making it my aim to help them.

A great book to help you wrestle thru this issue is The Supernatural Power of a Transformed Mind by Bill Johnson.