Nov. 20, 08 4:50 p.m.

The first point of this blog is to do something other than waiting around hoping that God will create experiences in our lives to prove himself to us. He clearly puts that ball in our court.

Ps 34:8 Taste and see that the LORD is good.

So often we try to set up the parameters in a crisis moments... "God if you are real..." The truth is, He is real and experiencing him the way he outlines will make him seem much more so.

Faith comes by hearing. ..
Ro 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ.

… But faith and God are proved in our experiences.

Our own feelings of guilt are overwhelming evidence of him when we disobey his law.

Ps 51:4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.

So how could we prove him right by the joy that accompanies obedience?

Jn 15: 10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

In so many ways, the Bible is set up as an experiment in risky obedience, like inching out on unsure ice only to find that it is solid enough to bear our weight as we dance for joy.

The more you risk obeying him, the more you prove him, the more joy we may have confirming the truthfulness of all that he says, most importantly, his love for us. So that is the first and primary purpose of this blog: Spiritual Experiment.

The second purpose is to address topics that are not Sunday-morning-friendly.
I am not a big fan of “shock-jock” preaching and do not think a congregation should be offended for the mere amusement of a preacher, so I would prefer to use this forum to discuss important but sensitive matters of faith. And there are many.

The third purpose is simply the overflow of a devotional life. There are just way too many spiritual theories and discoveries and experiments to ever hope to jam them into a Sunday morning sermon. They come far too randomly and too frequently and generate too much excitement to allow their benefit to sit on a shelf and grow cold while waiting for the right sermon to come along.

So what is here will be fresh, growing edges of faith along with theories waiting to be proved and discussed, all the while expanding the spiritual domain that belongs to God in my soul and hopefully yours as well.

Stay tuned…