Balanced Christianity! A gem, a jewel! To be devoted to serving the Lord not just with the mind, but equally with the heart and soul (Mark 12:30); not just with the head, but also with the emo­tions and spirit. Nor to be devoted to serving God just with the heart and soul, but equally with the mind.

Doctrine and experience must go to­gether, the latter flowing out of the former. "God is spirit", said Jesus to the woman at the well, "and His worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth."

We live in an age where the majority of professing Christians, it seems, con­centrate on the spirit, experience, heart/soul, emotions/feelings side of religion almost to the exclusion of the mind, truth, doctrine, head, reason side of things.

The result in many 'Christian' circles is confusion as to what is truth, a carnal approach to worship, a ready acceptance of error, and a gross lack of depth in understanding of the doctrines of the gospel. There is little hard thinking, dis­cerning and studying of the Word of God going on out there.

On the other hand, in Reformed cir­cles this century there has been much more emphasis on doctrine and the use of the mind in our approach to worship and life. That has been good and neces­sary, because it has kept us from the emotional and theological excesses of much of the church at large.

But where this has been accompanied by a lack of emphasis on heart-religion, experience, and sanctified expression of our feelings toward God and fellow be­lievers, it has left Reformed Christians weak in these areas, at best, and crip­pled, at worst.

Add to this the fact that the empha­sis on doctrine and thinking has not deeply influenced many of them to make them real thinkers, and we find Reformed denominations in danger of losing their doctrinal heritage. To how many former­ly Reformed denominations has this not already happened? And how many are presently in danger of this happening in them? We only need look at those churches that have the same or similar confessions to ours, but which are now largely liberal and Arminian. How could that happen? I believe it has to do with this matter of balance between doctrine and experience, head and heart. When Reformed believers are unwilling or una­ble to do the solid work of prayerfully applying their minds to the sound doc­trines of the Word of God, on the one hand, and a resulting lack in experience of the transforming power of those truths in their day-to-day living, on the other.

The greatest contribution we can make, as a denomination, to the professing church in New Zealand is the emphasis on knowing and living by sound doctrine. Hardly anyone out there, it seems, in what is calling itself the church, cares about biblical doctrine or truth. To most professing believers right doctrine is unimportant. What is important to them is whether or not people are fulfilled in their personal experience of God and worship.

This is why something as unbiblical as the 'laughing revival' could make such inroads into the church around the world. People "feel" so much better and closer to God, and on that basis they assume it must be the work of the Holy Spirit, regard­ less of how far removed it is from true biblical revival and its effects as described in Scripture.

Are Reformed churches immune to such movements? Only where their mem­bers are prepared to use their minds to think deeply and study diligently the Re­formed Faith, the doctrines of Scripture.

But more than that is needed. We need to pray these doctrines onto our hearts (Deuteronomy 6:5) so that we will be ut­terly convicted and convinced of them as being nothing less than the very truth of the living and holy God. Only in that way will we be powerfully affected by them in the way we live and worship and experience the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Reformed Faith has far more to offer by way of Christian experience than we realize. We do not need to go out­side Reformed circles or the Reformed Faith in order to learn how to have a deep experience of the knowledge and fellow­ship of our God, or a deeper experience of true Christian fellowship. We do not need to go out in search of joy and joy­ful worship. What we need to do is to dig much deeper into the treasure that we have already – the pure doctrines of the Word of God, which reveal to us our Lord and Saviour, and by which we may experience, personally and corporately, the knowledge and love of God.

Now, if we as a denomination are go­ing to manage to hold onto this treas­ure, as it has to be preserved and hand­ed down to us in the Reformed creeds and confessions, we will need to expose our minds and hearts to them much more than we appear presently to be doing. If they simply constitute for us a bunch of long and difficult words, that we hear only when the minister reads them in church just before he preaches about them, then we will not have much of an experience of the power of these wonderful truths. They need to come to us "with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep con­viction" (1 Thessalonians 1:5), else our lives will not be changed by them. And if our lives are not changed by them, then our chil­dren will grow up holding to the Reformed Faith just as their parents do, i.e. with­out any real heart-conviction. They will not know the tremendous power of God contained in the faith of their fathers, because their fathers' lives are not displaying it before them.

That in turn leads them to believe that the Reformed Faith has nothing to offer them in the way of life-transforming Chris­tian experience, of joy or power for life change. Then, when they come into con­tact with the exciting 'experiences' of either the charismatic movement or the world, they are strongly attracted and even persuaded that the truth must be with these, rather than with the Reformed Faith or the Reformed churches.

So some, who long for more of an ex­perience of God, of powerful worship, and a deeper level of fellowship with God's people, having failed to discern the truth of the matter, reject the Reformed Faith and leave our churches for those that they (mistakenly) think will give them what they are after. Or they go off into the world seeking excitement and emo­tional fulfillment. Others stay in the church, never knowing that there is far more to Christian experience than the external rituals they've grown up with.

But, oh how unnecessary this all is. A brief excursion into Reformation histo­ry or a sortie into Puritan literature will show that Reformed believers in the past have known much more of God's won­derful grace than we or many of our par­ents have ever known. The blessed real­ity is that neither God nor His truth have changed. It is only we who, generally, have failed to tap into the awesome rich­es of the same grace that is described and defined in our confessions, as they brilliantly mirror the pure doctrines of God's Word.

We are sitting on a treasure, which we must guard with our very lives. Treas­ures are meant to be explored, enjoyed, and invested wisely. We need to appre­ciate our great wealth, or lose it. What will it be, as far as you are concerned?