Spiritual Experiences Or The Lack Of It

I have been trying to write about my journey to intimacy with God but it has been a struggle and I still do not have anything written that makes sense. However, this has been on my mind for a long while. I think this is even why I thought I needed start a blog to share the story below because the first time I ever shared this with a friend, she said that it was just what she needed. This reminded me of 2 Corinthian 1:4 (NLT):

He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.

Truly, I went through these things to be able to share with people how God comforted me.

So, yeah, spiritual experiences.

A little background. When I was younger, I had so many vivid dreams, a lot of them were actually about people dying. Those dreams scared the life out of me and I really was not interested in being entrusted with the knowledge that someone would die. But I became known as the girl that dreams. I still dream but I have learnt not to rely on dreams because if all my dreams were to come true, there would be a problem, lol.

Other than dreams, however, I have not really had “spiritual experiences”. By “spiritual experiences”, I mean visions, seeing the supernatural, being slain in the Spirit/falling under the anointing/scattering chairs, hearing the actual voice of God, and the likes. This used to get to me a lot. The one that frustrated me the most was being slain in the Spirit.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with being slain in the Spirit. If you have read my salvation story you would know that I concluded that I did not need the Holy Spirit because I was not demon-possessed. When I got into secondary school, however, I began to understand that every Christian needs the Holy Spirit and it looked like the people that He ‘slayed’ were having beautiful experiences, so I wanted to be ‘slain’ as well. However, I was so concerned about my reputation that I did not fully commit to the Holy Spirit. Also, my knowledge and understanding of the Holy Spirit were flawed. I wanted to experience being slain in the Spirit, but with my concern for my reputation, I wanted to experience it in a church where people didn’t know me.

When I got to university and started attending a new church where people did not know me, I realised that my prayer had been answered. Now, I could allow myself to be slain in the Spirit without caring about my reputation since no one knew me. Except that it never happened. But the Holy Spirit would move in our services and people would fall and start screaming, but I would just be sitting there. Or when we would have conventions and people would lay hands on us, people would fall, but not me. I just stood there like an iroko tree and it started to bother me. I wondered whether I had committed a sin against the Holy Spirit. When I was a child, I had faked falling under the anointing a few times and joked about other manifestations of the Spirit, thus I was convinced that I had committed a sin against the Holy Spirit. And because of this, I began to ponder on someone’s misplaced prophecy - that I would leave Christianity.

I believed that I was beyond redemption and I would be going to hell. But I could not allow myself to go to hell, so I begged God and pursued Him like no man’s business. One night, we had a midweek service and after the preaching, we were praying and the Pastor said that there were people here that God wanted to take to a higher level in their relationship with Him. So, I plugged into it, believing that the word was for me. Maybe it was, but I was seeking a physical manifestation and nothing happened. But people kept on falling around me and I cried. I cried so much in church that people would have thought that the Holy Spirit had descended on me, but nah. I was just sad that I had been seemingly rejected.

On my way home, I thought about all that had happened that night and I was like, “what is the point of trying to be a Christian when God has rejected me? I should just live my life the way I want it since I am already going to hell anyway.” I decided that I would leave Christianity and live my life how I wanted. But as I was having this conversation with myself, I heard someone laugh and say, “Where do you think you are going to?” I was shook. I realised that it was God that spoke to me and I was offended that He laughed at me. When I got to my room, I had a conversation with God because, if He had not rejected me, why was I not being slain in the Spirit?

After releasing all my frustrations to God, I put on an old message by Bishop Dag Heward Mills to watch to sleep. But this message had audio problems, so I chose another one that I really did not want to watch, it was titled, ‘Overcoming Satan’s Three Greatest Deceptions’. I tried to sleep after putting it on but I could not. I listened to the message and Bishop Dag preached about the temptation of Jesus and the second temptation spoke to me. He said that the devil was trying to get Jesus to prove that He was the Son of God by asking Him for signs - to jump off the temple. Bishop Dag said that at the start of his ministry, the devil kept questioning the authenticity of his ministry saying that if he was really anointed, there would be healings and miracles. When he saw that the devil also questioned Jesus on this and Jesus was not even fazed by what the devil asked, he realised that the fact that there was no physical manifestation did not mean he was not anointed.

Once I heard that, I was like wawu! I just asked the question and God answered me. The way He even orchestrated the answer was so beautiful. There are truly no coincidences.

It would have been great if my problems with being slain in the Spirit or spiritual encounters ended there but it did not. Although I knew that I didn’t need any of that to be certain that I was saved, I couldn’t translate this knowledge into my reality. It also didn’t help that I saw other Christians I was inspired by that had all these spiritual encounters and were sharing their experiences and I had nothing, or at least, I thought I had nothing. 2018 was a particularly bad year because my goal for that year was to have spiritual encounters back to back, instead, I faced disappointments back to back.

However, God showed me and continues to show me, that having all these spiritual experiences is not the goal. While these things are indeed beautiful, they often distract people from who we are meant to fix our eyes on - Jesus! The goal is to know Him and be full of His love. How do we get here? Through the Word of God, the Bible. In all of my misplaced longing for spiritual experiences, I thought those experiences were God Himself.

My eyes are now opened. Although I wouldn’t mind having spiritual experiences, God showed me that it’s not about falling down and rolling on the floor because we have a supernatural encounter every time the Word is revealed to us.