Your Experience is a Gift from God – Are You Using Your Gift?
Romans 8:28-30; Part VI in SHAPE Sermon Series
Jim Whittaker using a Modified Rick Warren’s Sermon Outline
July 26, 2009
“We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” Rom. 8:28 (NIV)
Two pals are sitting in a pub watching the eleven-o'clock news. A report comes on about a man threatening to jump from the 20th floor of a downtown building. One friend turns to the other and says, "I'll bet you ten bucks the guy doesn't jump." "It's a bet," agrees his buddy. A few minutes later, the man on the ledge jumps, so the loser hands his pal a $10 bill. "I can't take your money," his friend admits. "I saw him jump earlier on the six-o'clock news." "Me, too," said the other buddy. "But I didn't think he'd do it again!"
Ohio Motorist, Reader's Digest, June, 1994, p. 72.
When the scriptures say that God will make “all things work together for good for all that love God,” it means all. Our experiences in life are both good and bad. In fact, we need to be sure we understand this. It also includes mistakes we have made in life that are just plain stupid. God can use our mistakes and poor judgment and make something good out of it. God does sometimes bring judgment upon us for a constant lack of concern about worshipping God. God wants to get your attention so God allows bad things to come into our life. The remarkable thing though is God wants the bad to bring something good. I am not denying the reality of death and disease, all I am saying is even in those cases, God wants good to come out of it. In this passage, it does give us a qualifier and that is to those who love God.
Let me give you an example, in Genesis Joseph’s brothers sold him to a caravan going to Egypt as a slave. That’s bad. There is nothing good about it, but God desiring to do good for those who love him allows this bad event to help the survival of Israel. Joseph says, you meant it for bad, but God meant it for good.
God was able to use his bad experience – sold into slavery and then later tossed into jail, to be compassionate person, full of wisdom, and used by God.
I. Connecting with our Experience
a. You must Embrace your experiences.
Joseph did not run from his experience. Your experiences become a part of who you are. You have a brother, a sister, or a mother die of cancer. That becomes a part of who you are. You made a bad decision in your youth that still follows you. That is a part of who you are. Rick Warren gives this advice: “You’ve got to stop running from your past if God’s going to use it for good in your life.”
Galatians 3:4 says this “You have experienced many things. Were all of these experiences wasted? I hope not.”
Who is a person that is most likely to feel the pain of someone who is going to divorce? Someone who has already experienced that. What we can’t do is to deny our past experiences. We cannot rewrite our past or change our past. Maybe there is something in your past that was painful. God says, “I can use it for good.”
We are not trying to deny that some experiences are painful. What we are saying is for God to use our experiences for good. We have embrace them all – good and bad. We as a family have been open about our own brush with abuse in our family. It does us no good to try to pretend it did not happen. It did. Are we going to let God use it for his glory or are we going to try to bury it? I am going with God, because I know – and I said I know, God will use our pain and make it so God can be glorified. God can turn our bad, our sad, and our good experience all for his glory. So don’t run from our own personal experiences.
b. You Extract the lessons.
I knew a lady years ago that I used to take breaks at work with. She had been married 4 times. Men were really messed up. She could prove it. She had already gotten 4 bad ones. What surprised me was one day she told me she met a new man at a conference and was getting married for the 5th time and moving to Chicago. Later, I heard it didn’t work. She got a divorce. Now either she was extraordinarily unlucky and picked 5 bad men, if that was the case, she needed to learn how to be a better judge of character. If she hadn’t picked 5 bad men, then maybe she needed to look at the possibility that she could be part of the problem.
Do we learn from our experiences? If we don’t, we are doomed to make the same mistake over and over again. What good is that?
2 Corinthians 13:5 says this in the Amplified, “Examine and test and evaluate your own selves to see whether you’re holding to your faith. [In other words you’ve got to extract the lessons.]
What does that mean? You take some time to review the experiences of your life. What do you look for? You look for benefits, patterns and lessons.
You embrace your experiences, you extract the lessons and…
c. You Employ them to help others.
Paul writes from prison in Philippians 1, “I want you to know, my friends, that the things that have happened to me have actually helped the progress of the gospel.” Paul is stating I am in prison but in the overall scheme of things, this has been good, because God’s work is getting done. Wow! Talk about optimism. Well, let’s learn from Paul’s example.
II. Putting your Experiences to Work
1. To Minister to others
Who can better help somebody going through cancer than somebody who’s been through cancer? Who can help somebody dealing with an addiction – to pornography, or medicines or drugs or million other things – than somebody whose been addicted to pornography or drugs or a million other things. Who can better help somebody deal with the pain of divorce than somebody who’s been there and knows what it’s like. Who can help someone deal with the problem of rejection or adultery than somebody who has experienced the problem of rejection and adultery? Who can better help the parents of a special needs child than parents who had a special needs child? And who can better help parents who had a kid who went off the deep end than somebody whose son or daughter went off the deep end? Who can better help someone through the loss of a loved one that someone who says I just lost my loved one last year? And who can better help somebody with AIDS than someone who has got AIDS.
God never wastes a hurt.
Listen to what Rick Warren says, “You always help people more through your weaknesses than your strengths.” Why? In weakness, you are working out of humility. In strength, you work out of pride. See the difference.
If you don’t use your experience it’s wasted. All you get out of it is pain. Embrace the experiences, extract the lesson and use them to help others. Employ them to help others by ministering out of the very things you think you’d like to forget.
2. To Motivate others.
The Bible tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:11 “Encourage one another.” Help one another. We’re to encourage. We’re to build up. We’re to motivate. We’re to inspire. How do you do that? You can do it three ways: You can give people hope. You can help people overcome their fears. And you can help people break down barriers.
The third way that God wants you to use your experiences…
3. Follow the Model, and be the Model
Not just minister and not just motivate but actually model for others. Paul says it like this in the book of Philippians 3:17 “Dear brothers, pattern your lives after mine and learn from those who follow our example.” Notice Paul says Follow my example. He says I’m going to be a model.
A model – a smaller representation of the real thing. That’s a model.
God wants you to be a model. According to Rick Warren, “Christian” means - Little Christ. A smaller representation of the real thing. There’s no way you are Jesus. You’re never going to be perfect. You are flawed, imperfect, smaller model. But God says I want you to be a Christ-tian. A Christian. A little Christ.
Paul knew that we all need models. And we follow by example. Philippians 3 “Dear brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine and learn from those who follow our example.” That sounds pretty arrogant. Pretty audacious when he says I want you to follow me. Paul just understands human nature. It is human nature to imitate. Practically everything you learn in the first five years of life you learn by imitation. That’s how do you learn. There’s nothing wrong with imitation. That’s how you learn.
Why was Jesus the greatest teacher ever in history? Because He modeled His message. He didn’t just say it. He lived it out. He incarnated the truth. It was incarnational teaching. The word became flesh and Jesus’ life was His message. He said this is how you do it, and then He did it. He didn’t say, “Do what I say not what I do,” as a lot of people do. He said, What you see is what you get. He modeled the message and He lived it. In John 13 He said this “I have given you a model to follow. As I have done for you, you should also do.” Jesus says I want you to follow My model and then I want you to be a model. I expect you to be a model. I expect you to be a model for other people. As a Christ follower God expects you to do the same. Titus says, “Always set a good example [that’s a model] for others.” Amen.