Experience and Curiosity

Why do we so often accept the premise that God is withholding something so good that we believe that He has His best interest at heart and not ours? When in reality He is trying to save us from heartache, pain and often death.

Often we believe our leaders, parents and elders of trying to keep us from experiencing something that would enhance our lives rather then trusting them to have our best interest at heart.

I have a family member who has repeatedly said that they would prefer to learn things by experience and I always want them to be willing to learn from others (especially me!). Today many of our post-modern generation only want to learn from experience. This type of learning has been elevated above any other form of learning. Know what it’s called when you think that you have to experience everything before you can know better? I call it stupidity! God calls it Death!

Find it hard to believe the death reference? Well, let’s take a look at Genesis 2.

¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” Genesis 2:15-17

And when they did eat of the tree they did die (spiritual death happened immediately and physical death began). Yes, often curiosity does kill. There are some things you are not supposed to experience on pain of death!

Sometimes we need to accept the wisdom offered to us from those who have learned by failure and sometimes we need to be willing to accept God’s Word when He says “No!” Often He desires to build our lives simply on the “Wisdom of God.”

When we insist to learn from experience pain is inevitably the consequence and that shows us as unteachable (which is another way of saying stupid!) When we stop learning we stop growing. The opposite of growth is – yes you guessed it death!

Let’s choose life!

Pastor Val

Partial Birth Abortion of a Vision

Recently I was taking my elders through a leadership program that John Maxwell’s group Equip has produced for churches. We came to a point where we were discussing how vision is birthed in the church.

Maxwell likens casting vision like giving birth. When a married couple decides it time to start a family they try to get pregnant (well actually the wife). Sometimes all it takes is one “try” and the pregnancy happens. Other times it takes multiple tries. Vision is like that. Sometimes it comes with little or no effort other times it is very hard work.

Staying with this analogy, each pregnancy is different. My wife and I had two daughters. When she was pregnant with our first daughter she had a very smooth pregnancy. But with our second daughter my wife was sick all nine months. The gestation period for birthing a vision can also vary from vision to vision. Sometimes things go so smooth with the launching of a vision that one wonders why they don’t do it every day. Other times the vision seems to cause great distress in the body that is trying to bring it to term.

Perhaps the darkest time for a vision is again similar to the actual birth process. Sometimes it is smooth and there is little pain. Other times labor is intense and the pain is unimaginable. But after the birth, the mother might not forget the pain of the birth process but the outcome is worth pain. It’s the same with visions. After the birth pangs the results are so much more important than the spasms that it caused.

The other interesting thing about visions after they have come to fruition is that once the pain has ended all sorts of people want to enjoy the results after the hard work is done.

I guess this reaction is normal. It seems that very few are involved in the normal birth process but the grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends all come pouring out of the woodwork after wanting to enjoy the results. It seems that the best thing to do in these instances is to welcome them to the vision and put them to work.

But what happens when we abort the process? What happens when we decide to quit before the vision is fully birthed? We experience a partial birth abortion. During my twenty-plus years of ministry, I’ve witnessed those seminal moments where the birth of the vision is either achieved or aborted in mid-birth. I remember some ministries where the vision was birthed and all of the struggles to bring the vision to fruition were forgotten for the joy of the vision being fulfilled. In other ministries the vision was aborted after going through almost the entire gestation process only to be aborted during the determining moment when everything is balanced on a razor’s edge. Defeat snatched from the jaws of success because we were unwilling to stay the course.

When we have sought God and his plan for us we decide it’s just too hard to trust the Lord and we decide we will rely on the failed ways of the past.

⁷ Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
Psalm 20:7 (NIV)

¹ Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord.
Isaiah 31:1 (NIV)

Trusting in the name of the Lord our God

Pastor Val