Growing Through Experience

Following on from my last blog. the second thing we need to grow in our faith is experience. It is obvious that just being around God, living the Christian life and belonging to a group of Christ followers is part of growing in the faith, or at least it should be. However, I've seen lots of people who have lived a long time without ever growing up emotionally, relationally and intellectually because they have never bothered to learn from their life experience. In the same way just being a Christ follower for a long time is no guarantee that a person is mature in their faith unless they have taken time to learn the spiritual lessons that their life experience provides them.

Every experience of life we have is an opportunity to grow in our understanding of who God is, how he works and who we are as God's children. In Romans 5 Paul says "we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." Everyone in our Church has life experiences that they can use to grow in their faith. Those life experiences do not have to be overtly spiritual in nature for us to learn spiritual truths, to God everything is spiritual. We have seen people in our church go through incredibly difficult times, some of those people grow amazingly through those times, others seem to wilt and die. Lots of people do all sorts of work in Church, some of them seem to thrive and grow in that work, others just find it a drag and don't grow. What makes the difference?

the difference is a person's ability to stop, reflect, learn and act on their experiences. It's their ability to look honestly at what is happening, to ask questions and to seek the answers from God that determines their growth. That is why I thought the first session in the lifeshapes course was so important as it provides a focused way of reflecting, earning and growing through our experience of life and service. Some people are naturally reflective types and do this sort of thing naturally. Others of us need to make time and intentionally go through the learning process, but we all need to do it. The alternative is that our life experience is wasted, we don't grow as we should and we miss out on all that God can do through us.