When I was a child, about six years old, we had a neighbor, Mrs. Ludlam, who babysat for my parents. My brothers and I would spend nights there from time to time with her. She was very attentive to us. She and I would sit on her sofa and play a “game”. I would make a “wish”, open the large Bible she had and we would search for the words, “And it came to pass”….Mrs. Ludlam helped birth in me a desire to search the Word. It was a silly game with a child and not very soun…d, doctrinally. But it helped foster an expectation that God hears our requests and that God is engaged with and responsive to our needs. Small experiences that we have can help define our lives later. Corrie ten Boom said much the same thing,
“Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work he will give us to do.” -Corrie ten Boom
In Rick Warren’s study of The Purpose Driven Life, he details experiences as one of the things God uses to prepare and equip us for the purpose for which he has created us in the S.H.A.P.E. process- Spiritual Gifts, “Heart” (or Passion), Abilities, Personality, and Experiences.
Even painful memories of experiences of the past can be confronted and transformed into something that God can use. Much of the emotional healing work at Titus 2 is accomplished in precisely that way.