Date: 13-Nov-2024
Name: Eddy Aigbologa
Topic: IS EXPERIENCE THE BEST TEACHER
Content:
We so much count on experiences that it is worth sorting our collections of them. Many of us have successfully relied on our personal experiences and those of others to get the outcome we desire. There are many examples in the bible where people based their actions on previous experiences. David, for example, referred to his previous ability to kill the deer and the lion to inform his confrontation with Goliath, and it worked for him. We can see in 1 Samuel how Eli, the priest, used his experience to advise the young Samuel on how to respond to the voice of God that Samuel could not decode. However, the mistake we sometimes make regarding experiences is that we only see the outcomes without considering the underlying motivations that led to the outcome.
As Christians, it is important to understand the motivations behind the experiences that guide and inform our actions. Let's pause for a moment and reflect on just one of our current actions or lifestyles shaped by our previous experiences. How much of the underlying motivations behind those personal experiences do you know? It will be a more complex exercise for us to understand the motivations behind other people's experiences we're currently leaning on.
For God, the motivations are as important as the outcomes. When God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, God was interested in determining Abraham's faith as much as God wanted to ensure the promised seed, Isaac, lived. We will be mistaken to copy and paste Abraham's action here without duplicating Abraham's motivations which was his tested faith in God. Just to remind us that this is not a devotion focused on faith but on the quality of the experiences we choose to lean on for our actions or lifestyles.
Experiences can be enhancing or diminishing. It depends on its quality measured through the eyes of God's word. It is unfortunate when we cannot progress our relationship with God because we are stuck by unexamined personal or people's experiences. Let's take some time to re-examine the experiences we count on, using the fruits of the Spirit and their contrasting motivations - love or hate, peace or worry, patience or impatience, kindness or meanness, goodness or wickedness, faithfulness or fear, gentleness or rudeness, self-control or carnality. A well sorted out experience trap will free us to serve God and accomplish His promises for us.
Like David in Psalm 19:105, let's make God's word a lamp and light to the experiences we count on. Like, Joseph, let God's word to you have a mitigating effect on our seemingly bad experiences in the journeys to our breakthroughs. Fulfilling God's will was Jesus's pain reliever through His excruciating experience on the cross with an outcome that has Jesus as the most exalted of the father.
I trust we're now positioned to answer the theme question - is experience the best teacher?
Prayer Points:
Prayers
II Peter 1:2-4 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
Acts 20:32 So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
James 1:2-4 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
