Genuine Bible Experience vs A counterfeit experience with God

Genuine .................................................... Pseudo Experience

Begins with God, God initiates the encounter.	Begins in the flesh, you seek the experience
Emotions are the outcome. You do not produce emotions.	Emotions do the creating of the experience.
Faith is necessary to trust God to give to you want you need when you need it.	Faith is replaced by your own works and efforts to achieve an experience.
The Purpose aligns with the relational will and brings man closer to the image of Christ in us.	Purpose is self-gratifying G
Knowledge produces feelings.	Feelings produce a pseudo knowledge and pseudo voice of God, pseudo experience.
Demands submission to the will of God.	Demands submission to an experience.
The Holy Spirit manifestations glorify Christ.	Manifestations are fleshly and of the devil. Magnify man.
The Holy Spirit never draws attention to Himself but only Christ.	Manifestations do not glorify Christ.
Manifestations are Biblical.	Manifestations are not Biblical.
Manifestations bring order.	Manifestations bring disorder.
Change is the work of the Holy Spirit	Change is the work of man’s methods and psychology.
Holy Spirit guides, leads but does not control.	Man assumes control and then abandons it to an unknown source.
The experience produces peace	The experience produces anxiety
Example: The crossing of the Red Sea Healing of the lame man	Mystical experiences

1. Genuine Biblical Experience

God initiates a real experience. If the experience is from God then it is a gift not a task to receive.

If you are hungry for more of God than read the word and pray, do his will and praise Him. Hunger and thirst after righteousness and you shall be filled. The disciples waited and prayed for the promise of the Holy Spirit. They did not build their emotions to a climax in order to receive tongues. They did not know anything about tongues.

The purpose of salvation is to initiate a walk in the spirit not in the spirit world.

The purpose of baptism in water is an experience of dedication and commitment to bury the old ways of sin and to walk as He walked. Baptism is not an experience of drowning in emotions.

The purpose of the baptism in the Holy Spirit is for empowerment to witness not empowerment to act like a drunken fool.

2. Pseudo-Experience

Pseudo experiences are like climbing an emotional ladder until you reach the point of total abandonment. It is just as if you jumped over the edge of a cliff into blissful emotions to your fall. A pseudo experience is a plain fleshly attempt to work up the emotions.

A pseudo experience may be a New Age experience into altered states.

Psychosomatic Experience:

The Holy Spirit is not a psychologist after the order of Sigmund Freud. Freud believed religion to be ‘the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity.”He taught that “religious doctrines are illusions and that faith in God is pathological.” He is neither a psychologist after the order of Carl Rogers or Abraham Maslow. God’s ways are far beyond the ways of sinful man.

If you have an experience it cannot be based in the principles of Psychology and be from God at the same time. Both are incompatible. It’s like mixing oil and water, sin and holiness, supreme Deity with filthy atheistic humanity.

by c chapman http://www.biblestudiestoday.com

This is taken from the series of lessons on "God speaks, the Spirit Speaks today" For more information click HERE.