Imagine you’re dining at a fine restaurant and have just savored the most exquisite dish of your life. You express your satisfaction to the waiter, and after a while, he returns with a piece of paper, saying, “Sir, I managed to get the chef’s recipe for you.” Filled with excitement, you head to the local supermarket the next day to gather the ingredients, even though the recipe only mentions vague items like “3 tablespoons of Italian sauce,” without any details about the brand, required quality, or whether it should be purchased from a specialty store. It’s no surprise that, in the end, you taste a disappointing version of what you enjoyed the night before.
Sometimes, the same thing happens with our experiences with God. Perhaps we attend a service, conference, or retreat where God grants us His presence or something particular that profoundly impacts us. The genuine impression and excitement that experience leaves us with, we try to reproduce in the future using the ingredients we believe might produce something similar. That’s why we “overuse” anointed songs. That’s why many preachers imitate others in their jokes, phrases, and even the posture they adopt while preaching. That’s why, some years ago, worship leaders in many churches would mimic the accent and expressions from Christian music CDs.
The intention isn’t necessarily bad, because it’s genuine and valid to desire more of God in our lives or churches. The problem lies in the ingredients: we imitate the form (what the recipe the waiter provided detailed) but ignore the factors that truly determined the original experience that came from God. How easy it is to repeat a song from someone filled with the Holy Spirit, but perhaps without living a life of integrity, dedication, effort, and spiritual disciplines—prayer, fasting, studying the Bible, giving, worship—and so many other crucial things that were developed in secret!
This has been a great lesson for me, and I pray that God teaches us to value and prefer the fresh things that come from Him, and to live honest lives that please the Holy Spirit.