Experience

The suffering you sent was good for me, for it taught me to pay attention to your principles (Psalm 119:71).

A young man working for a recording company received an important promotion. The man he was replacing was retiring after a brilliant career in the music business. The young man met with his predecessor to find out the secret of his success. The old man explained simply: "two words: right decisions." "How do you make right decisions?" asked the young executive. "Experience," came the terse reply. But the young man persisted, "And how do you get this experience?" "Two words," answered the retiring man, "wrong decisions."

I once read that experience is the worst teacher—it gives you the test before you’ve learned the lesson. Life is full of problems and aggravations because we are constantly faced with situations we are not prepared for, and we find ourselves scrambling to do the best we can with too little knowledge and not enough skills. No amount of schooling can prepare you for every situation that you will face in life, and some problems come upon you so quickly that you do not have the time to carefully determine the best course of action.

What a blessing to have God on our side! He is as close as a quick whispered prayer; whenever my telephone rings, I say a quick prayer as I am reaching for the handset: "Jesus, please give me wisdom to say the right thing!" Our Lord is willing to guide and support us in everything we say and do; the problem is, we often forget to ask Him to help us until after we have impulsively made a bad decision.

Thankfully, our Savior helps us in these situations as well. Jesus came to earth to make right what we make wrong. We make foolish decisions because we are imperfect; Jesus lived a perfect life for us, and He died to make compensation for all the times that our foolishness has angered God. Because of Jesus, we can be forgiven for messing up; because of Jesus, a new start at doing it right is available to us from the only Person who understands what doing things right really means. All we have to do is ask.