When Experience Doesn't Matter

In Dad’s journal entry for August 6, 2000, I read, “A schoolteacher claimed to have 25 years of experience, but her head teacher said of her, ‘She has just one year of experience 25 times.’” Ouch. 
 
Meditation
Lamentations 3:47-48--We have experienced panic and pitfall, devastation and destruction. My eyes flow with streams of tears because of the destruction of my dear people.

The Israelites experienced God’s miraculous work on their behalf through Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, and countless other righteous judges and kings. They had God’s dictated Torah in their possession. They were blessed with the partial fulfillment of Yahweh’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as they entered Canaan and subdued its heathen occupiers. Yet, tragically, like the schoolteacher, their experiences did not make them wiser or better. They panicked, suffered defeat, and were deported because they stopped worshiping God, were disobedient to His commands, and engaged in evil. And until this lesson is learned and applied, Israel will never experience God’s intended blessings.
            
Those who know and follow God should see a steady improvement in character, integrity, obedience, worship, disposition, and conduct. They should produce lasting fruit that testifies to God’s blessing because they are branches of the Vine (John 15:5). This is when experience matters. 
            
Experience is worthless if, as Oswald Chambers noted in As He Walked, it does not keep us at the Source, namely, Jesus Christ. It will not matter if we deify it. Oswald Chambers frames this similarly in Bringing Sons Into Glory,“Whenever we get our thoughts fixed on our experience instead of on the God who gave us the experience, it is impossible to form the mind that was in Christ Jesus.”
            
Experience doesn’t matter if we don’t learn from it or build on it. If I know from experience that freezing weather kills my young trees and plants, yet I don’t cover and protect them during the next freeze, what good is my knowledge? If I know that words matter, yet am demeaning or harsh with my speech, what good is my knowledge? In essence, we put what we learn to good use; what use is it otherwise? Something to think about . . . in reveration.
 
Inspiration
“Experience as an end in itself is a disease, experience as a result of the life being based on God is health.”—Oswald Chambers in Disciples Indeed 266
 
©2026 Daniel York  ARR.  Reveration is the weekly devotional ministry of First Cause.  To receive these devotionals, go to www.firstcause.org and click the “Click here to receive weekly devotionals” box.  Unlimited permission to copy this devotional without altering text or profiteering is allowed, subject to the inclusion of this copyright notice.      
 
Ecclesiastes 12:10—"The Teacher sought to find delightful sayings and to accurately write words of truth.”  (Holman CSB)