A spiritual experience is a wonderful experience that you think you’ll never forget, but in minutes or even as much as a day or two, it wanes in the background and does not influence your faith to grow stronger in your soul. It most likely will not change you.
Something that happens that affects your faith to grow deeper in your soul, is directly from God. It may have been something wonderful or it may have been a tragedy. It may have come from when you were reading the Bible or from a sermon that was based on the Bible that you heard when you were at church or elsewhere. It was something that you needed to hear or go through.
Jesus’ disciples are good examples of having both in their lives. They followed Jesus around and wanted to learn from Him because He said He was the Son of God and their Teacher. They were able to witness Jesus’ miracles such as resurrecting Lazarus from the dead, healing the lame, the blind, the deaf and the mute. He turned water into wine and 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread into enough to feed 5,000 + people one time and 4,000 + another time from a few fish and 7 loaves of bread. (The numbers 5,000 and 4,000 were only the men, but there were women and children, also, so that’s a lot of food to make.) He even walked on water on a lake in front of His disciples who were in a boat. At first, they thought He was a ghost! But Jesus spoke to them. Then Peter asked Jesus if he, himself, could also walk on the water. None of the other disciples asked, but Peter was a very bold person. Jesus said yes, so Peter climbed out of the boat and looking at Jesus began walking on the water. Then a strong wind began to blow and Peter became uneasy and looked down at the water. When he took his eyes off of Jesus, his trust/faith became weaker, and he began to sink. Jesus took Peter’s hand and they climbed into the boat. Peter had not yet experienced a deep faith, soul-changing event.
By the way, when true Christians take their eyes off of Jesus, their faith also becomes weaker, and they struggle again. That’s never a good thing to do! Keep your eyes on Jesus!!!
Another example regarding the disciples’ trust/faith and how it needed to grow is when Jesus and all of His disciples were in the “upper room.” Jesus said in John 13:33, “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.” He didn’t say He was going to die, but He said that he would also return. They were confused. He also said that they would have a time of mourning. Then Jesus said that He wanted to go to the Mount of Olives to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. The disciples went with Jesus. He asked them to stay in the garden and pray for Him, but instead they fell asleep. The disciples didn’t take what Jesus told them in the upper room very seriously or they would have made an effort to stay awake and pray for Jesus. The disciples were a little distance away from where Jesus was praying. Jesus was asking God to not allow His suffering and death to happen, but then He said, “Thy will be done.” When Jesus returned to where the disciples were, He found them asleep. Being with Jesus had not yet caused their faith in Him to be deep in their souls.
The disciples were having spiritual experiences that were amazing, but not soul changing until they saw Jesus on the cross and then die for them that it affected them deeply. It wasn’t until seeing Him after His resurrection and, also, when He ascended to Heaven, that it made a lasting impact deep in their souls to the point that they became Jesus’ missionaries. Jesus said that He would send another Comforter (the Holy Spirit) to help them. Jesus told them to preach the Gospel to Judea, Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the Earth.
It’s a good thing that the disciples’ souls were so deeply affected because without their preaching the Gospel, WE would not have heard and believed the Gospel ourselves and been forgiven af our sins and have eternal life in Heaven with Jesus through our confession, repentance and faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection from the dead. Wow, that would be a disaster for our souls. We would have to pay for our own sins in hell forever and ever.
The deeper your faith is, the better you will be able to weather the storms of life. If not very deep, you may even turn away from God, blaming Him for your troubles and tragedies instead of going to Him in prayer for help and allowing troubles to make your faith stronger.
So–what is your soul? It’s the part of you that will either go to Heaven or hell when you die. For true Christians, it is where God lives through His Holy Spirit. For non-Christians, they do not care about God and they live their lives the way they want to. Things of this world become their gods and their souls are destined for hell when they die.
Did you know that the heaviest part of a sailboat must be below the waterline in order for it to keep from capsizing from strong storms? That’s also true about our faith being deep enough in our souls to keep us from falling away from God when we’re experiencing difficult times. Also, the deeper our faith, the more God can use us for His glory in this life.
So deeper faith needs to be our goal because of our love for God. It is so important for our souls. It is so important for our spiritual stability. Spiritual experiences are nice, but deep faith is necessary and so much better! So, get out your Bibles and read them and study them and find a Bible-based, Bible-believing church that you can attend, even join, hear the Bible taught and worship Jesus, and fellowship with other believers in Jesus and serve Him there in some way! God loves our worship! God wants us to have a deep faith in Him and we need to want that, too!!!
Sharon
sharborr.blog 