Day 5

We need to remember what God has proved to us in our own experience.

‘So Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and called it The Lord Is Peace. To this day it stands in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.’ (Judges 6:24)

I learned a long time ago that people don’t learn much information just listening to a sermon. So why do I preach every week? Preaching often explains the work of God that is going on in a person’s life. Often people will say to me after I have preached, ‘That exactly fits what I have experienced this week. Now I can see God in it.’ Preaching should be subtly explaining our daily experience with God. If we have no experience with God, or are not being drawn into one, preaching can be the most boring thing in the world to listen to.

Likewise, the stories we read in the Bible so often mirror our own experience. Gideon, Samuel, Joshua, Moses – the Bible is filled with stories of people who knew and experienced God in a whole variety of circumstances. They experienced God in battles, in risky situations, in fears and in failure, as well as in victories – and their stories point to the illimitable resources that we too have in the same God.

Our knowledge of God and His ways is never experiential until we step out on a limb in obedience, so that there is only one legitimate explanation for what’s going on – God is at work. Living a surrendered life is the only way to discover He’s always as good as His name.

What is your experience with God?