How experience can be your greatest asset in the flesh, but weakness in a spiritual sense!

How experience is our greatest asset in the flesh, but a weakness in our spiritual life!

Good morning and God bless all of you.  I hope that this message comes to all of you in a well state of mind.  Today, I will give a little fruit for your brain on how experience can be your biggest strength and weakness as a Christian believer.

Experience can be defined as the following: practical contact with and observation of facts or events or encounter or undergo (an event or occurrence).  Thus, experience can only be gained by the hands on work of something, it cannot be absorbed by viewing; rather simply actually participating in a process to achieve a common goal.  Experience is something that we all long for, it will help us get that new job, help us learn to NOT do things in the future, or even experience can assist us on whether or not we should take either the back roads or the highway.  Often times we find ourselves thirsting for experience, so we try to put ourselves in the best possible situation to ensure that the time we have the leadership role, we will not be unprepared. But rather have the answers necessary in order to output a successful situation (e.g product, event, service, etc).

Experience in the world today is as prevalent as ever due to the fact it is:

• Useful
• Usable
• Findable
• Credible
• Valuable
• Desirable
• Accessible

The traits speak for themselves and assist us in becoming a better and more equipped person.  Matter of fact, experience is so well-thought of that my University consistently harps on the magnitude of having tons of experience.  The idea sounds great though, you look at two resumes (same age), one candidate has 21 years of experience in this field and meanwhile the other has never worked in this field in his life.  It is obvious you are probably going to throw away the one resume and hire your dream candidate who has a lot of experience in your given field.  So sure, in this life, experience can take you down routes that nothing else can get you there.  But the real issue comes when we pour our experience driven work mindsets to Church and to the body of Christ.  At this point we becoming so dependent upon our experience that we quit looking for answers from God and trust ourselves instead.  Our own experience and our own self becomes an idol to not only us, but the given person whom is relying upon their experience.  Often times this trait leads us to fail in regards to collaboration with the Father.  We stop asking for directions, alike in the flesh, except instead of taking a wrong turn being on a line; our entire eternity may be.

Perhaps, you are reading this and you are that guy with 20+ years of management experience and ultimately you rely upon your own knowledge in every situation and that works great, kudos to you.  But very few and far between are capable of doing so, actually all (most of all) people will need God to truly comprehend the given task at hand.  Here is why we we often times forget about God and go with our past, it is a mere process of evolution throughout society.

1. We weren’t prosperous
2. God blesses us
3. We become prosperous
4. We lose humility
5. We focus on our own gifts (that God gave us)
6. Yet lose focus on our Master
7. We forget to thank the One who made us prosperous.
8. We place ourselves on a pedestal above God.

We all begin at this place in our lives where we are not successful and break down to God and God gives us assistance, an opportunity to excel in life.  Suddenly we become successful and things are going better than we could have ever imagined, but we begin to take it for granted and lose humility.  We lose sight on exactly where we were in the beginning of the process, when we were actually reliant upon God.  Then instead of focusing on the tools God has given us (i.e. Bible & Holy Spirit), we focus on flesh like things such as experience to get us through our difficult times.  This can become increasingly dangerous because not only are we not focusing God, but we fail to notice that it was God who blessed us with the very gifts and situation that we are becoming reliant upon.  Lastly, we forget to thank God for all that He does and the many blessings that He has given us.  We even begin questioning if God could even be of assistance in certain situations.  If we’re constantly tooting our own horn for too long, we will have this notion that our experience can drive us through any situation and God isn’t really of any assistance.  We put God on the back-burner sort of like the last pick in a pick-up game of basketball.  You pick the guy because you have to, but you don’t trust him enough to give him the ball and let him make a play.  Often times, when relying on fleshly things such as experience, we have this tendency to put God below ourselves and only go to Him if we…………………………..absolutely have to.  This approach is not a very sustainable one, it’s an approach that’s destined for failure.  We must begin on focusing on God, even if we believe we have the answer, ask God.  Let God speak to you, because remember He is perfect.  God knows all things.  We must begin focusing on the Holy Spirit rather than the traits we think we have mastered in this world.  This issue of relying upon ourselves is found all too often in the world today, in a society of self-exalting social media, and self-gratification.  The reality is if God wants you to be exalted, He will exalt you.  Trust that the Father will do the necessary things that are in His very Will that has gotten us to where we are.

Perhaps you’re having trouble with being too reliant upon your own character traits, I simply suggest you get back into the Word and let God give you the guidance that is necessary for the success of yourself.  Again, God will exalt you if you need to be exalted.  Do not be afraid to ask for directions, remember you’re not asking an Exxon clerk, you’re asking a perfect God who knows all things.
1 Thessalonians 5: ¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray continually, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. (NIV)
On this planet we have two basic missions.  1) Follow the Will of God.  2) Witness and bring as many people to Jesus as possible.  Paul explicitly writes here that Rejoicing always, praying continually, and always giving thanks to God is apart of the Will of God.  It is not just a suggestion, but rather a command we must follow in order to fulfill God’s Will.  So stop relying on yourself and let God do the works of an all-mighty omnipresent Lord and Savior.
To end this blog, I want to speak of a little irony that is found by desiring something like experience in our flesh.  The same traits such as:

• Useful
• Usable
• Findable
• Credible
• Valuable
• Desirable
• Accessible

Can be said for what God can be used for in our own life.  God is always the following:

• Useful
• Usable
• Findable
• Credible
• Valuable
• Desirable
• Accessible

See?  Maybe Experience isn’t what we should be focusing on, but something/someone much larger who can bless us with opportunity and far surpass something as simple as experience.  Our God knows what’s best for us.  God bless you and have a wonderful day!