After you have been to the undiscovered country you can never go back

• Spoiled me for anything else
• I have never been the same
• Life as I knew it changed
• Things became real for the first time

We hear a lot about how travel expands a man or woman's mind.  It's true.  I have been fortunate enough to have seen a large part of the world.  My mind once expanded cannot go back.  If you tell me something about Japan, I have clear remembrances of that place..  my experience trumps your explanations.

If you tried to tell me about Germany where I lived for a few years, I would respectfully listen but I was there.  I know what happened.  I saw, I heard, I lived it.  My experience trumps your theories.

I grew up after World War Two.  My remembrances of those times are clear.  I know what I saw. I know how it was. Korea, Vietnam, Cuba Falls, The Berlin Wall.  The 60s.  70s.  80s.  90s.  2000s to today.  What might be history to you is for me clear recollection.  Experience is impossible to invalidate.

Those are all things that while living them we didn't know they were for us an undiscovered country.

Undiscovered countries are strange when you go there.  Visitors to India, China, Japan who are from the west often would have experiences that rubbed them the wrong way.  40 years ago it sure did.  I won't tell you of them, but there were some strange things.

This is also true spiritually.  We do not recognize how different life is after some unique time in the Lord changes us forever.  Some of those experiences are outside what those who have not experienced them might approve of.  For many it is the gifts of the Spirit, particularly Tongues.  Or being slain in the spirit.  Or Holy Laughter.  Or Fire Tunnels.  Or Prophecy. Or visions of angels or demonic presence.  Or strange manifestations that cause people to say, "They are drunk".  see Acts 2.

I don't always go these places I have been.. but I can't forget what happened there and what that means to me today.  I have been to the undiscovered country and can't go back to someone's theological theory that tries to debunk.   My experience trumps their theology every time.  That's what happens when you travel a bit.

At one time I was a critic of those who ventured into the undiscovered country.  After Toronto, after Pensacola I was one who was skeptical, even critical.  Sure I had experienced a great healing from the Ministry of Rodney Howard Browne.  On the floor for over an hour doubled up in Holy Laughter being released from a demon.  But the Lord wasn't done.  He wanted me to be careful not to call unholy that which IS holy.  "What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy." Acts 10:15

Pastor Dan Rothwell sat me down and worked thru some of the things I questioned.  I asked why he from time to time would bring in ministry groups and teams that were pretty off the wall (as I saw it).  He told me that he believed that people are capable of sorting these things out and the result should be that people will be expanded spiritually by such things.  

It certainly was true for me.

The devil has a stake in getting us to question what God is doing in the earth.  What "SHOULD" happen is ruled by bad theology.  That way when push comes to shove the enemy can say to us.. "Hath God Said"?   Sometimes he uses denominations to accomplish this.  Sometimes he uses the heresy hunters.  The spiritually inexperienced fall for such deceptions.  They are sometime even talked OUT of the things God has done for them.  God won't hate them.. He just will have to sideline them.  

To be clear there are some things that are outside the realm, but that is my opinion.   I once asked a national ministry leader why he went to certain places and ministered. I thought in a soft way he was endorsing them.  Not so.  He said, "How can they ever experience what we know to be true unless I go and help them go there".   He was bringing them the undiscovered country.. and they will never be the same again.