It is vital to firmly ground the Christian faith in the objective realities of God’s work and yet these must be subjectively appropriated by individual people.  J.G. Vos wrote a fine booklet (“Ashamed of the tents of Shem?”) on the promotion of the Psalms (and the singing of them!) in the churches.  His last point is “Emphasis on the Subjective Element Only” under which he writes,

There is observable a constant tendency to use only those portions of the Psalms which deal with subjective salvation – a Christian’s religious experience – such as the consciousness of God’s love, of forgiveness, of God’s care. The tendency is to regard these experiences of the Christian life as divorced from the foundation on which God has built them, namely, historical redemption from an objective realm of evil…

This is especially a tendency in the conservative Reformed tradition of which we are gladly a part.  Many can get caught up in the worthwhile questions, ‘how do I know that I am saved?’ ‘what actions prove the genuineness of my belief?’  These are excellent and have a very important place that is too often overlooked by professing Christians. By J.G. Vos continues a few paragraphs later,

Back of our personal experience of God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s care, God’s answer to prayer; back of our joy, our peace of mind, our hope – back of all these lies a historical work of redemption, without which our Christian experience today could not exist.  This historical work of redemption is wrought out by he almighty power of God in human history, from Genesis to Revelation, from creation to consummation, but especially in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ.  This is the solid granite rock on which our personal experience of salvation rests.  Such is the structure of real, Biblical Christianity.  It is solid, hard and strong as granite, the true rock of ages, the foundation of God’s almighty work of historical redemption from evil. (Emphasis mine)

I find the two emphasize phrases so helpful!  There is no true subjective experience (ordo salutis) without salvation history (historia salutis) and the order of emphasis is important even while both are essential. Vos continues,

In the Bible the present subjective experience of the Christian is joined organically with the historical work of redemption.  What God has joined together let no man put asunder.  To sever these two is basically wrong…