Last Lessons #79 – EXPERIENCE

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”  Proverbs 1:7 

Knowledge is mostly gained by reading books (especially the Bible!) and by travelling.  Those who expect to learn only through what they see on TV or their cell phone will never gain much knowledge.  Reading books, not texting or Facebook, is how you learn. 

Wisdom is another matter.  Wisdom is gained by taking what you have learned and acting upon it.  When you take what you learn in the Scriptures and put it into practice, you become a wise person.  Solomon asked God to give him wisdom when he became king and God did so.  Solomon’s downfall came when he stopped putting what God taught him into practice. (Read 1 Kings chapters 3 and 11) 

Acting on something means making it a part of your experience.  We can think, envision, plan, and even pray about something, but until we actually do it, we don’t gain wisdom.  That is because we don’t encounter the ups and downs, the challenges, the pitfalls, and the victories associated with activity.  With experience we learn what not to do next time, and we learn what to do better.  That’s how experience gives us wisdom.   

In the twenty years that I was General Director, BSF experienced many things because we did many things.  What we did every morning was to pray for big (and little) things and then depended on God to answer our prayers according to his will.  In this way, we experienced how God enabled BSF to: 

• Expand and strengthen the Board of Directors 
• Buy two more 74-acre parcels of land for BSF 
• Build more training cottages and train more than a thousand Teaching Leaders 
• Build an auditorium and begin Teaching Leader Institutes 
• Remake the Children’s Program for day classes 
• Add a School Program for night classes 
• Start Young Adult classes 
• Buy large presses to print and ship thousands of lessons 
• Increase the number of BSF classes to close to a thousand 
• Make BSF international by establishing classes in many countries 
• Utilize Area Teams to supervise the many classes 
• Conduct one hundred area retreats 
• Add two new studies to the five original ones, namely The Life of Moses and Romans 

God answered our prayers.  Sometimes we saw immediate success, but sometimes he said “no”, and sometimes he said “wait”.  We experienced “yes”, “no”, and “wait” and so we gained wisdom.   

I am grateful for the many experiences and the wisdom God gave us during the years between 1980 and 2000.  But the most wonderful experience that I had in abundance during those years was watching how God changed my life and the lives of so many people.  I don’t know numbers, but there were many who came to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, there were marriages saved, there were children taught the truths of the gospel, there were churches enriched, there were ministries begun, and there were countless hearts that began to depend on the Lord alone for all of life.  What can I say?  Soli Deo Gloria!