Delusional?

     Some friends have said (not in my presence, of course), “Yes, she’s highly educated and obviously intelligent, but somehow she’s still been deluded into believing a fairy tale all these years. If it makes her happy, ok...but how can so many seemingly intelligent people believe such foolishness?”   Like Paul, I would say “For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty."* .  Once you’ve become an ‘eyewitness’ to the very Presence of God, all intellectual arguments disappear in the Reality of the I AM.

   Some friends I’ve known have walked away from an encounter with Him and convinced themselves that in their earlier years they were simply caught up in an ‘emotional experience' which met a need at that time. Supernatural encounters with God can be a flash in the pan and in retrospect seem unreal to us, if they aren't implanted in the greater ground of the Word and His Body, the fellowship of believers. God’s presence is so Super Natural that it sometimes seems like a dream. However, when we stay close to Him and other believers, we experience that ‘dream’ on a regular basis and our lives are transformed in the process.

  Most certainly, an 'emotional experience' would not have sustained me during the last 40 years.  Only continual fellowship with the One who first made Himself known to me, along with the support of those who have also met Him in a very personal way, have grounded and rooted me in Him.  We
cannot assume that because people have a powerful encounter with their Creator, they will go on to grow and rejoice through an ongoing walk with Him. People need nurturing, mentoring, discipleship, encouragement, via regular communication.  Otherwise, they are often robbed of their awareness of His reality and presence.  It is often relegated to a time of psychological delusion during a period of insecurity.

   Unless someone is truly mentally ill, a lifetime of living out a delusion is unlikely to happen.  Certainly people have been sucked into various cults over a lifetime; however their fruit, or lack thereof, will serve as a ‘tell’. The problem is, those who haven't experienced His unarguable reality must find another explanation for what they witness in sold-out, sincere Christians who bear abundant fruit.  They certainly find explanations for the superficial ones.  Television and movies depict most Christians at best as hypocritical or greedy and at worst as sick, demented abusers of their fellow man.

   May we exude such Light, accompanied by such tender mercy, that no other explanation is possible but the reality of the One from Whom it streams...

*2 Peter 1:16