We put a lot of stock in experience. If someone has experience doing a certain job, we look to them with respect, because they know what they are doing. And that’s good.

But there is another type of experience that is purely subjective. It’s those things that happen to us, that enhance what we think or feel.

I remember a time when I was speaking with a woman about her beliefs. I thought this woman was a Christian at the time, but discovered that her faith was centered in a works-based doctrine. During our conversation, she told me about a number of people who had these experiences where God spoke to them and told them this or that. (Never mind whether those experiences lined up with Scripture, she was believing the experience above all else.) She was convinced her experiences were correct and tried to convince me to believe them too. She said, “but if you just heard what these people have been through, you’d believe that what I’m telling you is true.” She was basing her faith on experience – hers and the people she knew.

I think deep down the reason such faith-focused experiences are popular is because we want to feel God. We can’t see Him, so we want to know by subjective encounter that He is there. But there is a significant problem with depending on our feelings for what is true.

The thing is, these experiences, much of the time, are shortcuts. Jesus promised His followers peace far greater than the human mind can understand – an experience we all want, I dare say, above all else. And yet too often we grasp at the world’s imitation. Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you…” In this crazy world, peace is far too often an elusive dream. So we find ways to achieve it through yoga exercises and meditation or contemplative prayer and stilling our minds or alcohol or sex or drugs. Our stomachs are so tied up in knots, what else can we do?

Yet Jesus said, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

The world is looking for that rest, to experience soul-deep peace, but they’re looking for it in all the wrong places. What they don’t understand, is that true rest and peace comes not through experience, but through relationship. We walk by faith, not by sight. (Or by what we think we see through feeling or emotion.)

The disciple Thomas was one of those who believed his own experience rather than relying on the relationship he had developed with the Lord, and trusting what He had promised.

Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” So he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

In other words, I have to experience this, feel it, see it, touch it for myself.

And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!”

Ah peace – that “experience” we all long for.

Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John 20:24-29

To know Jesus as the Bible reveals Him, is to know peace. When subjective, emotion-controlled experience replaces that relationship, we get a temporary fix to mask a permanent problem. If, on the other hand, we embrace the relationship of knowing Jesus Christ as Lord, His peace (not to mention joy, love, patience, and a host of other wonderful qualities) are ours for the asking.

It’s Who you know, not what you think you feel.