Experience

Romans 5:4

And patience, experience; and experience, hope:

Experience always determines what a person can do in life. When you fill out a job application, they have a section on that application that asks for your experience. They want to know your experience so they will know if you are qualified for the job they are offering.

Experience determines what God can use you to do in the Christian walk. You are limited in what you can do if you have no experience. However, experience doesn't come cheaply; there is a price to pay for experience. Romans 5 shows two steps you must take before you gain the experience needed to be used in a greater way by God.

The first step is tribulation. You cannot have experience without going through hard times. Hard times is what gives you the knowledge and skill to know how to help others in their difficult times. For instance, before I pastored the Maranatha Baptist Church, I could only talk about pastoring from what I had studied in other pastors. Now that I have pastored, I can talk about what pastors need to do from experience. The experience I have gained has not come without tribulations. Tribulations are the greatest schooling one can go through because they give a person on-the-job experience in handling tribulations. You will never gain experience without hard times.

The second step to gaining experience is patience. Patience is the ability to weather the tribulations without quitting. Patience is willing to endure the tribulation to learn the lessons needed to have the experience to help others. You will never have the experience needed to be used mightily by God if you are not patient in times of tribulation. These two steps to gaining experience should challenge us in a couple of areas.

First, it should challenge us not to quit in hard times. You cannot gain experience if you quit every time life becomes difficult. The most experienced people are those who had the patience to continue in difficult times. If you run every time a difficulty arises, you will never gain the experience God needs you to have to help others. Have you ever stopped to realize that God sent the hardship your way so you could gain the experience to help others? Quitting must never be an option when times get hard. Instead, be patient in those times of difficulties so you can gain the experience God wants you to have so you can be a help to others.

Second, it should challenge you to learn everything you can from your tribulation while you are going through it. One mistake many make is they never learn from their tribulations. Oh, they endure the tribulations, but they don't study what to do in their times of tribulations. Experience comes from the knowledge learned during the hard times. Those who study the tribulations they go through will know how to help others in their times of difficulty.

Experience is key to being able to help others, but you must be patient in your times of tribulation to gain that experience. Are you becoming impatient with God and griping because it seems God is not answering your prayer to help you through your tribulation? God will leave you in your time of tribulation until you learn from it what He needs you to learn to help others. So, stop griping and start learning and your tribulation will be a tool you can use to help others.