Things just happen. I’ve heard that comment, or some similar, most of my life. Most people who believe that usually have a skewed view of God and His interaction with us. When I was younger, I was told by a band director in high school that, “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” He was definitely trying to stress the importance of preparation rather than chance. That sounded really cool at the time, but the preparation part was much harder than I anticipated. Needless to say, it was one hot week of band camp. We marched for hours on a barely painted, smaller than a football field, slab of asphalt parking lot, which contributed to a loss of consciousness for several. We prepared hard and finished well that year. It was a great experience as a freshman. It was something I’m thankful God allowed me to experience. I learned the valuable lesson of preparation and hard work. I also learned that luck has so little to do with what we experience.
Experience happens to us
As we travel through life’s challenges, experiences happen. Those experiences happen to us as a result of life. From the time we open our eyes to morning until we close our eyes to the night, things happen to us. Things we see, things we feel, and things we hear all affect us in different ways. It is important to realize that the way we react to experiences is a result of our view of God and His sovereign providence in our lives. So, a healthy view of God’s sovereign providence is significant. It takes away the idea of luck and places our finite lives in the infinite hand of God.
Experience helps us to grow
The oftentimes-painful effect of experience is growth. You almost never hear someone say they learn most from the good things that happen to them. Rather, it is through the difficulty of hurt, pain, rejection, and sometimes despair, that people learn the most. As painful as it is, this type of growth can help us the most. It has been said that, “People who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” This is so true and also true of our experiences.
I used to play the board game Risk with a best friend of mine growing up in West Columbia. Honestly, he would whip my tail every time I played him. That is, until one day. It was the day I learned his ultimate strategy from experiencing defeat over and over and over. From that day forward, I hardly ever lost again. Why? It was because I learned from the experience of defeat. The sad fact is that we usually learn more from defeat than victory. However, the more we learn from defeat, the less defeat we experience. So, in some ways, defeat is necessary for victory! This is especially true when we realize that God wants us to experience victory through defeat. We thank God for His amazing grace!
Experience helps us to help others
This is the tough one to swallow. Our experiences really do have the capacity to help others. Since most of our experiences come in the form of trials, I believe Paul addresses this in a great way:
3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)
No one going through a difficult experience really wants to hear that. I know. I’ve been there. Sometimes I live constantly in that reality. No one wants to consider how God might use a tough time in our lives to help others down the road. I get it. But again, it is about perspective. If we look at our lives as God looks at our lives, we must do so with the understanding that we are much more out of control than we think. We are out of control because God is in control. If God is sovereign….and He is, and if God loves us infinitely…..and He does, then that changes the game. God is ultimately and intimately involved in our lives. As difficult as it is, allow God to work through our experiences to help us help others. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. There will be days when your experiences seem larger than your ability to understand. But, allow God, through your prayer life to soak His love into your heart and heal and comfort you through days of misunderstanding, fear, and the unknown.
Experience isn’t always what it seems
Sometimes, we tend to trust experiences as normative occurrences. This is not always the case. I’ve heard people tell me of ecstatic experiences at different churches where people walked on the backs of pews, spoke in self-created languages, and gave God credit for it all. Like I said before, experiences aren’t always what they seem. We should always attempt to discern our experiences through the lens of Scripture. Did my actions cause this experience? Did my lack of action cause this experience? What is God trying to teach me through this experience? Am I being punished? Is my experience validated through Scripture? There is an answer to each of these questions and you should pray that God would reveal them to you through His Word.
In the case of religious or spiritual “experiences,” we should always be careful not to attribute some things that seem spiritual to the work of God. Sometimes, it is just the work of man trying to manufacture some intimate spiritual “experience.” We cannot manufacture intimacy with God. This intimacy actually occurs when we humble ourselves before the amazing Creator of the universe. Getting off my soapbox now.
Several months ago, I heard a rattle under the hood of my wife’s car. It was making an awful noise. From what I could tell, the alternator was going bad. I decided to wait until we were back home. Se we began the race home from Spartanburg hoping to beat the catastrophic failure of our alternator. We made it back and I changed the alternator the next day. Guess what? It wasn’t the alternator. Surprise! The rattle was still there. It was the water pump. You see, it wasn’t what I thought. I promise I heard the alternator rattling, but my experience was not as it seemed. I misdiagnosed the problem and cost myself an extra $100 or so for the alternator. What did I learn? Experience is not always what it seems. What I thought I heard…..I didn’t hear.
Learn from your experiences and trust you sovereign God who loves us more than you can think or imagine. He will walk with you through the tough experiences in your life. Trust Him!