EMPLOYING YOUR EXPERIENCE
You Are Shaped for Significance - Part 6 of 6
Job 10:8 & Selected
Job 10:8 is the verse we've been using as our theme verse in this series. For six weeks we've been looking at "You are Shaped for Significance". We've been talking about how God makes every person individually unique through a series of five different things. SHAPE. God has given you spiritual gifts. He's gifted you to do things that other people can't do. He's given you a heart -- a motivation and desire that there are some things that turn you on and some things that turn you off. There are some things that interest you and some things you couldn't care less about. That's your heart and God gave you those desires. He's given you natural Abilities. Some have the ability to work with things or people or animals or words or numbers. We all have different kinds of abilities. God has given you Personality. We're all unique and different in our personalities.
Today I want to wrap up this series by looking at your Experiences, and how God has customized the experiences you've had to make you, you. Your experiences have shaped you. All of us operate from what I call a Personal Referral System. It's kind of a data bank of memories and experiences that you've stockpiled in your mind. Every time you see something or you feel something or you hear something you immediately attach it to some frame of reference and say "Does this jive with my experience? Does this agree with what I've experienced in the past? Does this correlate with what I know to be true?" For instance, if I were to say to you, parenting is easy. That does not jive with some people's experiences. You would either be saying, "Yes, I agree. It's easy" or "No" or "I partly agree" based on your experience. If I were to say "High school was fun!" Some of you would say yes and some no. If I were to say "Crime doesn't pay!" Some of you would say, "Yes, that's my experience. I've found crime doesn't pay." Others would say, "No, I've found it to be very profitable!" It's just different. We've all had different experiences.
You've been shaped by many different experiences. Some of them were your choice but many of them were beyond your control. There are family and relational experiences. Obviously people have tremendous influence in our lives. People say, "You're just like....." There are educational experiences -- the schools, the books, the seminars, the training you've gone through have helped shape you. There are spiritual experiences -- meaningful times with God, times of commitment often in a time of crisis. Those experiences have shaped you. Vocational experiences -- your career, your job. And the painful experiences. All of these -- even painful experiences.
Remember the story of Joseph in the Bible. He was a man who everything went wrong for him the first half of his life. He was betrayed by his brothers. He was sold into slavery. He was taken to a foreign country. He was sold to a master. He was falsely accused of rape. He was put in prison. His life was all downhill the first half of his life. Yet, later at the end of his life, he could say to his brothers, Genesis 50:20 "You intended to harm me but God intended it for good."
God has a personal plan for your life. God made you for a purpose and He has a plan for your life -- He has also uniquely designed experiences for you which are both personal and purposeful. God has a purpose in the experiences you have. What are those purposes?
Three intentions that God has for the experiences in your life. First, John 13:7 "Jesus replied, `You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.'" Most of us understand what He's talking about. Hind sight is 20-20. Usually perspective comes after the fact rather than during the experience. It's a lot easier to look back on life and say, "That's what was happening. That's what was taking place and these are the experiences and lessons and benefits." Often you don't understand them when it's going on but God says "You don't understand right now, maybe, but you're going to understand eventually why these things happen in your life. If you've ever wondered "Why is this happening to me?" I hope you won't throw away this sermon. I hope you'll take these notes home and file them rather than toss them away so that someday when you start to ask "Why is this happening to me?" you can pull out these three reasons. God says He intentionally plans experiences in your life for three reasons:
1. They are intended to teach me to trust God.
2. They are intended to build my character.
3. They are intended to accomplish God's purpose.
The Bible says very clearly that the experiences that come into your life are not random, they are not by chance, they are not freaks of nature, but that God intentionally has a purpose behind them here.
1. TO TEACH ME TO TRUST GOD
2 Corinthians 1:9 "This happened so we might learn to trust not in ourselves, but in God." You're never going to know that God is all you need until He's all you have. Sometimes God knocks out the props from underneath you and everything falls flat and things don't go the way you wanted them to go because you'll never know God is all you need until He's all you've got.
When I was in seminary I was a teaching assistant and grader for a well known professor in the school I went to. Very popular man, well known Christian Bible teacher named Oscar Thompson. I was with him in the final years of his life when Oscar had cancer and died. It was very tragic. A man in the prime of life, very popular with all the students, in those difficult days when he was dying of cancer he said, "I want you to know that I've been to the bottom and it's rock solid." He meant I've been in the depths of despair and pain and even there you can depend on Jesus Christ.
Last week I asked all of you to write down the greatest lesson you learned last year. There were hundreds of them. I was deeply moved by many. Saddleback is a spiritually growing church. I was fascinated. I want my kids to read some of the cards about the lessons you've learned in the last year. It's interesting that about fifty percent of them all said the same basic theme, "God is in control and I'm not! But I can trust Him."
The greatest lesson is that God will take care of me and provide for me if I trust in Him and stop trying to control my own life myself.
The greatest lesson I learned is trusting in God to take care of me really works.
The greatest lesson I learned is that letting go and letting God is a daily choice that I must make and when I do He works mightily.
The greatest lesson I learned is that God is faithful and you can count on Him."
The greatest lesson I learned is to relax, trust God in all areas of my life, spouse, work children, family, friends and future.
The greatest lesson I learned is as my husband served in the Gulf War I learned true trust in God.
God allows experiences to teach you that He is trustworthy.
2. TO BUILD YOUR CHARACTER
You don't grow character by reading about it. You grow character by experiencing it, by making right choices when you're tempted to do the wrong thing. Romans 5:4 "We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character; and character, hope." Circle "character". Suffering actually builds character in our lives. The experiences that are there, are there to teach you. For instance the character quality of integrity. Integrity is learned when you do the right thing when it's much easier to do the wrong thing and you're tempted to do the easy thing. Endurance is learned when you keep on keeping on when everything in you wants to give up. Responsibility is learned when you keep your commitments even at great personal cost because you said you'd do it.
As I read through the cards this week and the lessons you learned it's obvious that many of you are learning character, patience and many other things.
Proverbs 20:30 "Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways." It's true. When God turns up the heat then we change. How many of your parents told you "Don't touch a hot stove!" when you were growing up? How many of you touched the hot stove anyway? How many of you told your children "Don't touch a hot stove!" How many of you had children who touched it anyway? Each generation must learn the stove is hot! Some things, the only way you learn it, is by getting burned. Some of you learned some tough lessons this last year by getting burned. Sometimes all the good advice in the world does not get through and some things the only way you learn it are learned by experience. "Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways."
3. TO ACCOMPLISH GOD'S PURPOSE
There's a purpose behind it. For instance, Paul was taken prisoner to Rome. He was taken prisoner falsely, hand cuffed, in a shipwreck on the way to Rome. Then he was jailed in a dark, dungeon jail. He was chained to a Roman soldier 24-hours a day. One of Caesar's own guards was chained to Paul 24-hours a day. Yet in spite of all that Paul says in Philippians 1:12 "Whatever has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel." He says, Yes, it's tough on me right now but there's a greater purpose behind it. What was that greater purpose? One, he was getting to witness to a captive audience. There was a guard chained to him everyday and as soon as that guard went off duty he went back to Caesar's inner palace and shared some things there. History tells us that in a matter of a few years there were actually members of Caesar's own family who had become believes. Where had they heard about it? "What has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel."
There are many experiences in your life that you're not going to understand here on earth. You're not going to know why they happen until you get on the other side of eternity. When you get to heaven it's going to make sense. There are many experiences we don't understand and can't explain. We'll just have to wait until we get to heaven to figure them out. In the meantime, whether you can figure out why it's happening or not, I want to talk with you about how to make the most of your experiences here on earth -- how to get the best of them.
HOW TO USE THE EXPERIENCES OF LIFE
Experience can make you bitter or it can make you better. The difference between bitter and better is the letter "I" -- I make the difference. It's your choice. You get to choose whether the experience will make you bitter or better. There are four steps you can take that will help you make the most of the experiences of life.
1. EXAMINE
Examine your experiences. Look at them and take some time to review them. Think about your life. Don't just live it. Think about your life.
The question you want to ask is, What really happened? What has really happened in my life to date? What really happened in that circumstance, that experience?
For instance don't just say, "That job was a good experience." Ask yourself, "What aspects of that job were a good experience for me?" That's a good clue about what you ought to do in the future. Instead of saying, "I really enjoyed that class" say "What was it about that class I really enjoyed?" Look behind the experience whether bad or good. What was it that didn't work in that experience? What was it that I didn't enjoy? What was it that I did wrong? You examine your experiences.
The Bible says this is very important. Galatians 3:4 (Good News) "Did all your experience mean nothing at all. Surely it meant something!" Unexamined experience is wasted. You experience it but you don't let it benefit your future if you don't look at it. You need to examine your experiences. It's especially important for you to examine your failures. Why didn't it work? What went wrong? Look for a pattern. Don't waste the hurt and don't waste the pain. Stop and examine and say "What went wrong?"
Phillips translation of Galatians 3:4 "Has all your painful experience brought you nowhere?" Sad to say, for a lot of people it has brought them nowhere. They're not better, they're just bitter. It's that old statement, Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it. If you don't examine your experiences you will find yourself making the same mistake over and over and over.
The Bible says in Proverbs that the fool never learns from mistakes. Why? He's not teachable. Experience does not teach everybody. Experience only teaches the teachable. Experience only helps those people who stop and examine the experiences they've had.
2. EXTRACT THE LESSONS YOU LEARNED
You look for insights. Look for principles. Look for truths. Say, "What can I learn from this experience?" When you're going through situations you don't want to ask "Why?" but "What?" Don't say, "Why is this happening, God?" You may not find the answer to that. Say, "What do you want me to learn?" Experience is an educator. The School of Hard Knocks teaches you some things you only learn that way.
There are two rules in the school of experience.
1. If you flunk the test the first time you just keep taking the test until you pass it. If you don't learn the lesson in experience you just keep on doing it until you finally get it right. If you flunk it God will give you another chance.
2. Just about the time you think you've graduated God makes up a new course. Just about the time you think, "I've matured and I've got it all together" God says, "No, you've got a whole lot more to go."
Deut. 11:2 "Remember what you have learned about the Lord through your experiences with him." It says, Remember what you've learned about the Lord... How? How do you learn about the Lord? through the experiences with Him. If I had to define maturity I'd say that maturity is the ability to find lessons in everyday life. Maturity is the ability to extract lessons from the experiences of life. That's the mark of maturity. To be able to see what the truth is, what's the principle, what's the essence, what's working, what's not working. And that's what God wants you to do. He wants you to grow up and mature and learn to see lessons in life.
Notice it says "Remember what you have learned..." Circle the word "remember". Why does God want you to remember your experiences of life? So you don't keep making the same mistakes. Over and over. You go on. You learn from them. This was the biggest problem of the Israelites in the Old Testament. They had a very short memory. They kept forgetting. They kept getting into trouble as a result. When the Israelites were in Egypt for four hundred years as slaves and God brought Moses and did those ten magnificent plagues -- a tremendous expression of God's power -- but they quickly forgot and a couple of days later they're at the Red Sea panicking and worrying. They had forgotten what God had already done. So God opens up the Red Sea and they walk through to the other side. Immediately they say, "Oh no! We're in the desert! There's no water." They have just forgotten what God had done in the Red Sea. So God brings them water. Then they start complaining "No food!" and God brings them food. They just kept forgetting all the goodness and how God had bailed them out and helped them time and time again in the past.
The Bible says over and over again -- Remember! Remember! Remember! Learn the lessons!
The best way I know to do this is to write them down so you don't forget them. A very practical thing you can do to aid your personal spiritual grown and your success in life is to get a journal and keep a journal of the lessons you've learned. I've already filled two and working on my third. I'm not talking about diaries. I'm talking about a journal simply of lessons. You stop and think through the experience and think "What did I learn from that?" and you write it down. I have these journals I've written down these lessons in and I go back and review them. Why? Because I don't want to have to relearn those lessons. Some of them weren't very pleasant learning experiences! I don't want to go through all that heartache again and I certainly don't want to waste the pain I went through so I write down the lessons I learned and I continually remind myself so I don't have to go through it again. But if you don't write it down, you're going to have to relearn it. You'll forget it.
So how do you get the most from experiences? Examine them. Extract the lessons you learn and write them down in a journal.
3. EXPLOIT THE EXPERIENCES OF OTHERS
Tap into them. Get yourself into a network and learn from other people. The average person in life learns from experience. The wise person learns from the experiences of others. The fool learn from neither. It's wise to learn from experience (I touched it and got burned), it's wiser to learn from the experience of others (They touched it and got burned, so I'm not going to do it!). You don't have enough time in your life to learn all the lessons from personal experience. There's not enough time in life to do that. So you've got to learn from the experiences of others. It's quicker and it's certainly easier. You need to exploit the experiences of other people.
Proverbs 27:17 "People learn from one another just as iron sharpens iron." How do you learn from others? Learn to ask the right questions. That's the secret. You can learn from anybody if you just know the right questions to ask. I can learn something from anybody because I've learned how to ask questions. If you ask questions, you can pull it out of people. God not only plans experiences in your life intentionally, purposefully and personally but He also brings people into your life for a purpose so that you can learn from them and the people that were around your life were intentionally put there. Some of them as good examples and some of them as examples of what not to do. You need to know the difference. you need to exploit the experiences of others. We learn from each other.
Proverbs 25:12 "A warning given by an experienced person to someone willing to listen is more valuable than gold." The best advice is often from somebody who has made the same mistake. They've already been there. That's the value of the twelve step groups and recovery groups that we've got. Who better to help than somebody who can say, "I've been there. I know what it was like. This is how I worked through it. Let me save you a little bit of pain by giving you some steps." We learn from each other.
The richest source of human experience is not just the people around you but the Bible. It is the richest source of human experience. It is filled with thousands of years of stories of examples of people we can learn from. It's better than a biography because biographies don't always tell the truth. Every biography that's ever been written has a slant to it. It is either in favor of the person or it is not in favor of the person and it doesn't tend to just lay it out plain. But the Bible, because it's God's Word, always tells the truth. So when it talks about people it gives the good, the bad, and the ugly. It's just honest. When it tells us that David was a man after God's own heart it also says he committed adultery. When it says he was a great leader and writer of songs, it also tells us his family fell apart. Why? Because the bible tells the truth about people.
If you want a graduate course in life, immerse yourself in the Bible. Exploit the experiences of others. Abraham, Moses, David, the disciples. Exploit the experiences of others by studying this book.
Although experiences are helpful and God does use them in your life -- God uses experiences to shape you and teach you and they are very important -- experiences are helpful but they are not infallible. Experiences can be misleading. They can be misinterpreted. Experience is not always reality.
For instance, you can be misled by an experience. I could bring a magician up here on stage and he could make a beautiful woman disappear and a lion appear in her place. You would have experienced the disappearance of the woman and you would have experienced the appearance of the lion. You would have experienced it but it's not reality. So just because you have an experience doesn't mean it's true. Experience can be caused by all different kinds of things -- drugs, personality, the devil, slight of hand -- many different reasons. That's the problem with the New Age movement. It's build on experience -- I've experienced it therefore it must be legitimate. I could give you a dozen illegitimate causes of experience. What you need is a standard for life by which to evaluate everything that happens to you and judge it rather than just say, "I felt it, therefore it must be right." What is that standard? God's Word. It's always the truth.
Always use God's word to judge experience. That's very important. Experience can be misleading, misinterpreted, misunderstood. It can be an illusion. But you have to use something that is reliable. A mark of maturity is if I have an experience that contradicts what God's word says I'm going to choose what God's word says over my personal experience because I could be wrong. If I set up myself and say, "I experienced this!" even though the Bible says the exact opposite then what I'm saying is my experience is more legitimate and reliable than God. What you're doing is setting yourself up as God.
If someone comes to me and says, "I think God wants me to run out from my wife and marry this other woman." I say, "Why?" They say, "I feel it's the right thing to do. God wants me to be happy and therefore it's the right thing to do." Let's look at what the Bible says. When the Bible says the exact opposite what does that say about your experience? It's coming from the wrong source that's what it's saying.
4. EMPLOY YOUR EXPERIENCES TO ENCOURAGE AND HELP OTHER PEOPLE.
Utilize them. Use your experience for the good of other people. If you don't use your experience what good is it. If you have all those experiences stockpiled in your mind and you don't benefit anybody from them what's the value of it?
1 Thes. 5:11 "Encourage one another and help one another." Circle the two ways it says we can employ our experiences. You can use the experience you got to encourage others and you can use your experience to help others. This is very important especially in our society today. In the past fifty years ago, people had a network of an extended family. Most people grew up in a smaller town and all of their relatives lived together. As you were growing up you had this great chain of experienced council with you. You not only had mom and dad, you had your grandparents, maybe even your great grandparents. You had a few uncles, a few aunts. They were all there in your family, committed, helping you come through the stages of life that they had already been through and give wise council and experience. An extended family provided a council of experience you could grow on.
But that's not true anymore. Most of you don't life anywhere near your grandparents or your parents or aunts or uncles. They're spread out all over. We're in a fragmented society today. We have to create a new network to provide wisdom and council and experience as people go through stages of life.
What is that new network? The church. The Bible says, Titus 2, that older women are to use their experience to train and encourage and help younger women. In the same chapter it says that older men who are more experienced in life, in business, family, are to use their experience and wisdom to teach and train and encourage younger men. That's what it's all about. God doesn't expect you to have this experience and not use it to help anybody. He wants you to employ it. It's a critical need.
I received this letter from one of the older women in this church I dearly love. She's been a member here from the very first year. "This is such a joyful time for me at Saddleback. I'd like to share it with you. I am the only older woman in the Heart-to-Heart group of young women in which I participate. girls who could be my daughters and some even my granddaughter's age are dedicated to living lives based on God's principles, prayer loving lives, eager to raise their children in God's way with God's love and guidance. ... they make me feel special nd tell me the wisdom that comes with age is much needed and wanted in today's world. And I am fulfilled." She ought to be fulfilled! She's doing what God says to do.
Who are you sharing your experiences with? If you've been alive more than ten years you've got some experience. God intends for you to use it. Encourage one another and help one another it says.
Today is the anniversary of Saddleback. I have to say that as your pastor, the single most frustrating thing to me about the church is the untapped wealth of experience setting in this room right now that is going unused. Incredible talent, incredible experience. Backgrounds -- God's brought us together from all different kinds of backgrounds. He's shaped us all differently. God brought you here. I don't believe you're here by accident. I believe that God intentionally brought you to this church family because you have something to offer to this church family that this church family needs. God made you for a purpose and He's given you experiences for a purpose and you have something to offer. Every one of you! You have something to offer because of your experience. You need to offer it for your own emotional health, physical health, spiritual, mental health. Balance. You need to offer it and God expects you to offer it. Some of you have experienced deep hurt in your lives maybe even in the last year -- the death of a loved one, a painful divorce that ripped your heart out, an illness, cancer, you got laid off at work, you went through a bankruptcy, your kids flipped out and went off on drugs, you had a major crisis, you experienced some kind of hurt. God expects you to use that hurt to minister to others. He expects you to use that experience to encourage and help others who are going through it.
"God gives us comfort in all our trials so we in turn may be able to give the same sort of strong sympathy to others in their troubles that we receive from God. This means if we experience trouble it is for your comfort and spiritual protection." God takes you through problems and He comforts and helps you through it (obviously -- you're still here, you're still alive) and he brings you through troubles and difficulties so that you can turn around and encourage others with the same help that you were given with the lessons you learned, the experience you had. God wants you to help others through what you've already been through. That's called ministry. God expects you to have a ministry. Don't waste your hurt. If you've gone through the pain and you just hold it inside, what good is that. But if you examine it, you learn from it -- extract lessons from it, and you employ them to encourage and help others, there's benefit to it.
For six weeks we've looked at how God has made you unique and shaped you, how He's given you spiritual gifts and a Heart and Abilities and Personality and Experiences. There is nobody like you in the whole wide world. You are unique! God's shaped you to be unique, but why? He didn't do it just so you could be unique! He didn't put forth all that effort just so you could be different. He did it -- He made you unique -- for a purpose. He did it so you would be shaped for significance, that your life would matter, that you would make an impact with your life that nobody else could have because your experiences are unique. He doesn't want you to just store up those things in your mind and keep them to yourself. He's saying, Use them to help other people.
Another card I got this week says:
The greatest lesson I learned was this: There are people all around waiting to be ministered to in all areas if you're just willing to look.
I hope that's a lesson you'll learn. That there are people all around waiting to be ministered to in all areas if you're just willing to look and to share the God given shape He's given you.
Which ministry should you be involved in based on how God has shaped you? It's time to give something back. Don't waste your life.
In a world of teeming millions crowded in on every side
When you feel so bewildered that you want to run and hide
Think of Him who counts the sparrows and gives each rainbow a special hue
He counts the hairs you carry for He made just one like you.
When you think no one really cares and feel so incidental
That every nice thing done for you is merely accidental
Recall the snowflakes you've seen fall each one is different and it's true
That to God you're extra special for He made just one like you.
If you've heard you're not important with no special identity
That you're only just a number to be carried out to sea
Call to mind that you're His creation and from the songbirds take a cue
Let the whole world know you're happy for He made just one like you.
And He didn't do it just so you could be unique. He did it so your life would matter. So that you could have significance and impact and meaning with your life because you use it to help others. That's called ministry.
Prayer:
I'm going to ask you to make a commitment this morning that may be the most important commitment you've ever made, even greater than many others, next to inviting Jesus Christ into your life. Of course that's the greatest commitment and if you've never done so I would encourage you to say, "Jesus Christ, make Yourself real to me. I want to have a relationship with You. Come into my life." If you've already done that would you say I want to commit the God given shape that I have to be used the way God wants it to be used. Would your pray this prayer in your heart, "God, I give You all that I am. I owe it to You however great or little; it belongs to You. I want to give You the experiences of my past good and bad. I want to give You the schedule of my present. And I want to give You the potential of my tomorrow. I want to be available to be used for the purpose you created me for. Help me to discover my ministry."
Father, I look out on these faces and I am in awe of the potential in this church. When I think of the untapped wealth of experience sitting here right now and knowing that if properly committed to You and mobilized that there would be an atomic explosion of power that would cause all of Orange County and even the nation to take notice. Would You help us to commit all that we have to You, realizing that we can trust You. You're building character and You have a grand purpose and we want to be in on it. Use the gifts and abilities ad experiences You've given to us for the good of others, for the glory of God, and for the growth of ourselves. In Jesus' name. Amen.
WORDS OWNED BY:
RICK WARREN (http://www.rickwarren.com/)
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