Looking Back

Lately I have been trying to spend time looking back over my life and seeing how God has influenced and worked in it to bring me to where I am now.  It has been a pretty interesting introspection, and as I look, I see God's hand moving in many different areas of my life.

I think the thing that struck me the most was the churches that I have ended up at and that being at Calvary Chapel Chester Springs was one of the best things that ever could have happened to me.  I say this not only because of the great teaching I received from my pastor, and the friends that I will have most likely until I die, but because of some of the more subtle ways that God has used that church in my life. 

I began this whole thought process when I was thinking about some of the different times I have shared with people that I have crossed paths with, whether it was roommates, Jehovah's Witnesses, or just people I have talked to on the street.  I thought about all of the times that I would talk to people and be able to reference verses in scripture that I hadn't heard in ages, or stuff that just seemed far beyond what I can normally comprehend.  I can definitely attribute all that to God, and the moving of His Spirit, especially if you know how terrible my memory is.  So I began to wonder where exactly did that knowledge come from?  The engineer in me didn't want to just assign the label of "divine intervention" to it without first giving it due thought, as doing so can rob God of more glory than we think.

Eventually, I realized that much of the knowledge I have of scripture, I can attribute to the teaching I received at Calvary Chapel, and that all of those sermons were prepared by God so that I might use them at a later point.  And how incredible is that!  As I have been understanding this point more and more over the years, I have been able to recognize the effect of a godly sermon more readily in my life.  Even now as I attend Calvary Chapel Antioch, I can see the different topics lining up in my life to cater to different events that have been happening, and relating to the people I meet.  I am also realizing the importance of being at a church where the pastors are truly seeking to reflect what God desires for the people to hear, and they are grounded in God's Word.  I say this, because what we hear and learn has a far more reaching impact on what we believe than we might first imagine.  It also means that we need to make sure that we ourselves are grounded in what the scriptures teach, and that we are students of the Lord first, and students of our churches and pastors second.  I have found that I have taken many teachings for granted in my life, and I can't explain some of the basic doctrines of what we believe. 

This is all just one way in which I have seen God at work in my life, and I can't even begin to describe some of the other ways, as each time I reflect on it, I discover even more ways.  I encourage all of you to try and do a similar thing, because I can guarantee that you will be just as blown away as I am.