I’m learning more and more, after years of ministry to broken and hurting people, that “facts” alone can’t heal or replace past destructive experiences.

Many people are in bondage to destructive beliefs – about themselves, the Lord, others or life in general – due to past experiences. Mere cognitive knowledge in the form of rational logic, facts and principles (even when true and Biblically based) are not enough to bring healing or wholeness when someone’s reality is defined by lies that they’ve come to subjectively believe due to past experiences. Only a new experience – in the person of Jesus as the Living Word – can break the power of experientially-based lies and bring freedom.

Take a twenty-two year old man (let’s call him Robert) who’s whole life and thus his whole belief system – including his sense of self, worth, validation and ways of relating to others – has been the “street” and hustlin’. Drugs have been Robert’s answer to despair and pain, and manipulation has become his means of survival.

Even when Robert sincerely turns his life over the Jesus, you can teach him all the cognitive facts, logical truth, sound doctrine and wise principles you want, but at his core he’s still “street”. Until he experiences a different reality, the experiential reality of the street – how he thinks, how he perceives, how he reacts – will continue to dominate his life.

How do most churches deal with people like Robert? They have him recite some “sinner’s prayer” and then immerse him in cognitive knowledge – like Biblical truth, sound doctrine and wise principles. He will logically, rationally and fully agree with those facts, and the church will take pride in doing a good job of “discipling” him in the Lord. They may even feature him in their monthly newsletter!

But Robert will have struggles, because at the core he’s still thinking, perceiving and reacting out of his experientially-based internal reality – which is still rooted in the “street”. External facts, like Bible knowledge and sound doctrine, just are not enough to change the reality of those experiences.

If knowledge alone could fix Robert, he’d have fixed himself long ago. But God never expected that of us. Yet we expect it of Robert, and we put the crushing weight of all our “oughts” and truths on him. We tell him that if he only has enough will power to believe or obey or whatever, then he will “make it” in the Lord.

When Robert stumbles or doesn’t change fast enough from his “street” reality to our good-Christian standards, he again will be told to be strong and that it’s up to him – he must find the will to obey God’s principles and hold fast to the “Word of God”.

But such performance- and fact-based admonitions are a cop-out by the church, because no one is willing to deal with – or knows how to deal with – the street-based mess that’s still at the core of Robert’s life.

There’s a war going on inside Robert between the fact-based truth, doctrines and principles he’s been taught by other Christians – which he logically accepts – and his experientially-based beliefs and ways of perceiving that are still present from the “street”.

So Robert – a man who sincerely wanted the Lord but instead was given doctrine, verses, sermons and principles – becomes exhausted from his internal battle returns to the street and drugs and hustlin’ and manipulating. On the street, he may never have been fully alive, but at least he experientially knew how to survive. And everyone at the church shakes their heads with piety and pity, because poor Robert just didn’t want to “follow Jesus” enough to change.

Long term, trying to fix folks with “facts” through cognitive teaching, Bible study, understanding right doctrine, sermons, etc., just doesn’t work. Yet that’s what most churches keep doing. It’s cheap, it’s impersonal, and it’s nice, neat and tidy. Throw in a zippy worship band during the Sunday service, and it may even be fun for awhile. But it just doesn’t work.

I have seen, time and again, how real freedom only comes when people experience the actual life of Jesus in those areas formally occupied by lies – not as some presumption that “Jesus is now in you” after praying some silly “sinner’s prayer,” but as a powerful reality rooted in authentic, deep and transparent confession, forgiveness and repentance.

Helping Robert experience Jesus as his new life and vibrant reality, where before there were only lies and bondage, can be a messy process. It requires helping Robert confess and expose his core beliefs to the Lord, and then being willing to let Jesus directly speak – actually and concretely with no attempts on my part to cloud things up with mushy abstractions or my own opinions – His transforming truth to Robert.

When Jesus speaks, lies shrivel up and die instantly. It doesn’t take months of counseling. It doesn’t take any litany of performance-based “oughts”. It is Jesus simply and directly meeting Robert in the lies that Robert was willing to confess and expose, and speaking His truth, His reality, His perspective personally and tangibly to Robert. Now Robert’s reality is Jesus in him. There is no room for the lie. It is gone, and with it goes the bondage it brought. And Jesus now in Robert – rather than doctrine and Bible verses and principles and doing all the “oughts” that he learned in church -brings true life and freedom.

Now, rather than a lie, Robert has the experience of Jesus living in that place in his life that formerly was a source of bondage. In the Bible, that process is called repentance. But we have lost the art of ministering repentance, rooted in transparent confession and concrete forgiveness, one-on-one to people.

With Robert, am I willing to let him honestly and openly express the hurt and the pain and struggles without freaking out or preaching at him? Can I love and embrace Robert, mess and all, and accept him fully and completely just as Jesus accepts him? Am I willing to walk with him to those places where he is in bondage to lies that took hold from a lifetime of ungodly experiences, and minister forgiveness? And when go together to the pain and the hurt he’s carrying, and help him expose the lies of his past to Jesus, am I willing to sit quietly as we invite the Lord to gently and lovingly speak to Robert? Because unless Robert encounters Jesus, not simply as cognitive knowledge but as living truth, then there is nothing I can say, and no verse I can quote, that will change Robert’s reality.

Many will not understand what I’m saying, because they have never taken a chance on Jesus. Rather, they put their faith in the Bible, in principles, and in figuring it all out based simply on ever-increasing knowledge about God and His precepts. Those are good things, but were never intended to be substitutes for Jesus in us.

Are you willing to walk to the place of pain and lies and bondage in your own or in another person’s life and then simply asking what the LORD – not Scripture! – has to say. Yes, of course, what Jesus wants to personally say to us to bring life in place of lies will always be consistent with Scripture. But religion, based on right understanding and right practices, can’t change anyone’s reality. Only new life, through Jesus in me, can bring real change.

Let’s stop thinking that leading Robert in some “sinner’s prayer” and then letting him “hear” from Jesus through sermons and teachings is enough. Let’s take the time to get down into the core of where Robert feels and reacts and believes, and helping him expose all that mess to the Lord so he can experience His life in place of those deeply-rooted lies. Only the life of Jesus in Robert can bring healing grace and transforming truth.

For example, most men who come to Christ from the “street” believe, at their core, that they are worthless and unable to be loved. Drugs helped them deal with that pain. I can quote a dozen Bible verses at Robert about how God loves him and values him. He can logically and rationally believe those verses – fully and truly. But it still doesn’t feel true.

Until someone is willing to go with Robert to those dark, painful places in his life where those experientially-based lies reside, and show Robert how to let the life of Christ displace those lies with His very personal and experiential validation and love, Robert will continue to feel worthless and unlovable no matter how many verses I throw at him. The Bible and sound doctrine and scriptural principles – God’s cognitive Word – were never intended to be a substitute for Jesus, the Living Word! In fact, apart from Jesus the Living Word, His cognitive Word is not going to bring much real change in Robert’s life. Scripture, without Jesus in me, is death.

Our churches have forgotten how to introduce desperate men and women to Jesus – other than having them pray some little prayer to “accept” Him into their lives and then cramming them full of the Bible. But until they encounter the Living Word, they will never find healing and wholeness. And until they find healing and wholeness through the person of Jesus, His cognitive Word will not find fertile ground or bear much fruit.

I have taught God’s precepts for years. They are good teachings, and contain much wisdom that comes from my own experiences and Scripture. But unless we share a common life – which must be Christ in us – my teachings and God’s precepts will remain simple facts that won’t result in real change, even if the hearer logically agrees with everything I’m saying.

Think about it this way: I go to some pre-technology tribe in Mongolia and offer to make them Americans. All they have to do, I tell them, is take an oath of allegiance to the United States and then I’ll teach them all the facts (i.e., doctrine and principles) they need to know to live and survive in the United States. After months of intense classes where they learn and logically understand everything I know to teach, and even master American English, I put them on a plane and they land – alone – in New York City.

Does anyone really think they will survive? No! They now need to gain experiential knowledge and change their internal value system if they hope to thrive and prosper in America.

Why do we expect someone from the our prevailing post-Christian culture, with all the experiences and internalized values of that culture, to make it in the Kingdom of God with only a simple prayer and then stuffing them with lots and lots of cognitive knowledge?

Again, simple facts won’t “fix” them. Only the Living Word, which replaces the experiences of their past by bringing new life within them, can do that. Then, and only then, can teaching cognitive “facts” have any real benefit.

As the Apostle Paul observed, we have many tutors (i.e., “fact” tellers), but not many fathers in the faith. I guess some things never change.