Why does Jesus require "experimental belief"

I was laying on a surgical table in my doctor's office some years back to have a cancerous cell cluster removed from my face caused by sun damage.   My doctor had just finished giving me a local anesthetic by a hypodermic injection into sensitive flesh. I was stressed out more by the shot than the surgery. He sensed my tension and started idle chat about the Los Angeles Laker's  basketball team.  I wasn't that stressed about the surgery or the possibility of the doctor leaving some hideous scar on my face, because I knew from talking to my wife that he was a revered, highly respected surgeon and yet wanted to be a general practitioner. Over the years, we'd become friends. He was the man God used to get me off the path of alcoholism by telling me a year or so previous that I wouldn't make it to age 50 without being on a Liver Donor list and certainly wouldn't make it to 60 years if i didn't stop drinking.

As I listened to his rantings bout the Laker's problems, I wanted to go beyond chit chat and figured this would be a perfect moment to get some gems from this special man.  So, I said, "Doc, can I ask you a question?" 

 He said, "Sure, just don't ask me to explain why Shaq puts up with Kobie's antics." Or something like this.

I said, "Someone told me I was really lucky to have you doing this work. They were told by a certain, highly respected doctor that you were probably one of the best, naturally selected surgeons around and yet you choose to still keep your general practice and do surgery on a case by case basis or so." 

He chuckled like a country school boy and said, "Oh, well. I wouldn't know about that."

I asked, "But how did you learn these skills so well? And why not be a permanent surgeon?"   I expected him to evade the question by graciously accepting my compliment, saying he had no idea or something, and then quickly move back to the Lakers. But he didn't.  He focused on the learning aspect and never addressed the reasons he still had a private practice. 

 "Let me tell you," he said as he methodically worked on my face. "All the book learning does not a surgeon make.  It's all about Watching, Doing, and Showing. I was fortunate to have had a great teacher show me, but more importantly require that I do what I was shown. TO ACTUALLY PERFORM WHAT I HAD KNOWLEDGE OF.  The real learning is in the doing and the experience of it. We're then required to show others what we where shown and this is important to learn even better. " 

He then elaborated on how learning by the experience of doing, even making mistakes, implying experimenting,  is the only way to really learn something. 

I said, "That is really the only way to really learn something, isn't it?"

"The ONLY way!" he said emphatically. 

I don't know why but that has stuck with me ever since.  

In my walk with Jesus. I'm finding more and more that Jesus requires me to learn the same way as my doctor friend.   Jesus is all proving himself to me by the life and breathe of the Holy Spirit which brings me into and through true life experiences learned through actual life trials and testing and tribulation that honestly I feel like I'm a living experiment.  I call it experimentation to experience the existence of what was once only hypothetical in nature. I.E. Reading about the trials of Jesus and the saints in the Bible then finding myself going through actual life drama myself. * 1 

Jesus requires, compels me by the power of the Holy Spirit to take what's written and to move on this information by empirical  methods * 2, meaning to prove it by experimenting and experiencing..  This means I'm compelled by His grace to walk and live in the Spirit and not in the flesh. Romans 2:1  And  "The letter kills but the spirit gives life." 2 Corinthians 3:6, meaning that the written scriptures are dead but only the Holy Spirit bringing Rhema (see my Blog Divine Wisdom).  Only belief in something without experiencing it is only superficial and God never deals with the surface but goes to the inner man to do his working.

The Bible tells us that the just shall live by faith. (Romans 8:17). But it is not until we have literally experienced and lived through trials demanding faith and actually witnessing how God truly is in our lives, can we truly trust in what we believe.   

Truly, whatever God wants us to learn, He will give us plenty of opportunity to do it, to experience it, and how ever many times it takes before we've learned, he'll take us back to that point a hundred times. God is patient. 

As Oswald Chambers says, "God does not ask us to DO the things that are naturally easy for us - He only asks us to DO the things that we are perfectly fit to do through His grace, and that is where the cross we must bear will always come."  

Scripture proving the importance of experience - experimentation of trials.  When we conduct an experiment, we have proven something by actual observation - hence moving from theory to proof. 

2 Corinthians 5:6,7 KJV, James 1:2-6 KJV, Psalms 27:2,3 KJV, 2 2 Corinthians 1:4-6 KJV, Romans 5:4, 15:4 KJV.

QUOTE by George Mueller: "To learn strong faith is to endure great trials. I have learned faith by standing firm amid severe testings." 

Charles Spurgeon supposedly said God's great love for Daniel was proven by him being thrown into the Lion's Den. Because Great Faith Demands Severe Exercise.

My prayer:  Dear Heavenly Father, by your great grace and mercy I ask in the name of Jesus Christ , through the Holy Spirit, that I may live and walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh. Amen.

NOTES:

Note 1:  Experiment means doing a test to examine the validity of a hypothesis, determining something previously untried. Experiment:   a. A test under controlled conditions that is made to demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy of something previously untried.

b. The process of conducting such a test; experimentation.

2. An innovative act or procedure: "Democracy is only an experiment in government"(William Ralph Inge).

3. The result of experimentation: "We are not [nature's] only experiment" (R. Buckminster Fuller).

intr.v. (-mnt) ex·per·i·ment·ed, ex·per·i·ment·ing, ex·per·i·ments

1. To conduct an experiment.

2. To try something new, especially in order to gain experience: experiment with new methods of teaching.

Experiment means doing something to prove a hypothesis.  the same as Experience gained by doing.  A student driver could spend hours in the classroom learning about how to drive a car, but until they actually sit behind the wheel and move the vehicle can they learn. 

Note 2:

Empirical means - provable or verifiable by experience or experiment. 

The word empirical denotes information acquired by means of observation or experimentation.^[1] Empirical data are dataproduced by an observation or experiment.

A central concept in modern science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses. It is usually differentiated from the philosophic usage of empiricism by the use of the adjective empirical or the adverb empirically. The term refers to the use of working hypotheses that are testable using observation or experiment. In this sense of the word, scientific statements are subject to, and derived from, our experiences or observations