At training camp a few weeks back, one of the preachers, Deon, told us that “faith isn’t just something to believe, it’s something to experience”. This is one of those things that we hear during a sermon and think “wow, that’s deep”, but just add it to our journal or forget about the next week. Honestly with all the crazy stuff I heard at training camp, I did too. It wasn’t until today that those words became so powerful for my life. This is something that was so good I couldn’t help but share in hopes its would stir something in someone else’s life too.
I found myself in a conversation not that long ago where we were talking about prayer and everything that comes with it. I contributed to the conversation and started talking about things I do when I pray that help when i’m struggling to find motivation to pray or simply just the words to say when i’m praying. And somehow this ended up giving a couple of people some new things to try in their own relationships with God, simply because I was able to talk so confidently and fluently about something I’ve experienced.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s easy to talk about ourselves. Whether that be memories from our childhood, our family, or our hobbies. But we also know its not as easy to talk about things we aren’t as familiar with.
The same truth applies to our relationship with God. It’s so much harder to preach the gospel to people when we haven’t experienced it for ourselves. So I’m learning that I need to know myself and my story better because at the end of the day, that is going to be my best tool for expanding God’s kingdom. Not any quote I hear from my pastor, not even my favorite bible verses. Words are essentially meaningless unless I have something I can connect them to.
God is our Father, and we are His children. So think about it this way. Children learn animal noises because they hear the noise and see the animal on, let’s say, a flash card or something. The same thing goes for us. We need to hear/read God’s word, then go out and experience it for ourselves.
That’s all folks.
T-5 days till Launch!!
(I should probably start packing…)