experience

C.S. Lewis:  Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.

Our experiences shape us. They teach us things that books can't. They help to shape how we view the world. They are inevitable and everyone's experiences are different. For some people those experiences might give certain of the world, of God and of people. 

For instance, someone who lives a really sheltered life, might not think to be cautious with strangers, because maybe they don't know some of the danger that could posses. Yet someone who has been hurt by a stranger, might be overly cautious in the view of those around them. No matter what your experiences are they teach you and grow you. I believe God gives you each of your experiences to shape you. He's soverign and allows things to happen to make you more like Christ and to give Him glory. 

Sometimes though, you might not see how experience shaped your view. For instance if you experience was that everyone in the world is safe and there is nothing to fear, it might sound foreign to you the first time you hear about someone who was robbed. You might not know until this happened that what you thought about the world, a situation, or a person was wrong. 

That's the problem with experience friends. I agree that you learn, but do you always learn the best lessons? I know my experiences have taught me a lot, but I definitely think it's been more on the side that there are things to fear in the world and at times that makes me overly worried. It's something God and I work through everyday. 

Yesterday I learned that a view that I had was completely twisted and I didn't even know it. It's a personal view so I'm not going to share what it was specifically, but as I was hearing someone else's views I began to realize that what I had classified as "normal" or " that's just how it is" was really not normal or how the world really works. 

And can I just say it makes me wonder... what other things that I don't know. I'm praying that God will show them to me and I wanted to encourage you to do the same. Ask God to show you the things that the world has taught you that are not from Him. I want to see the world the way God does. I'm not saying I want to know everything God does but I want Him to change the things in me that I don't know need to be changed. 

We see in this same desire in the Psalms. 

Psalm 139:23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!

Psalm 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

In some ways He has really changed my heart and given me a renewed spirit. In the big ways that "christians" should act. Note I didn't change. HE changed me and I'm SO thankful for that!!!! But what I do pray now is that I would learn the smaller things that aren't as obvious and that I would open to it. 

Friends I hope this is your prayer as well. that you would let God search you and grow you in ways you don't even know you need to grow. <3