How does God teach you? (part 1)

Here is a series of questions I'd love to ask pretty much the whole world (realizing the number who read this blog will fall woefully short of that aspiration):

1. Do you ever recognize God teaching you via life situations and events?

2. How do you recognize those times? Do you ever feel like God pulls you out of your own life as if you are looking in from outside?

3. How does God teach you? With humor? With melancholy? With sternness? With trials? With opportunities? With a chalkboard? What does it look like?

4. What is the most recent lesson God has taught you via life situations and events?


Here are my answers in two parts. Part 1:

1. God often teaches me through life events and situations. I read the Bible, and I try to read it a lot. God certainly teaches me through Scripture, but the Bible also talks about being hearers and doers of the Word. In a sort of parallel structure, I often find that I learn truth in the Bible but I don't fully understand what it means until I rub up against it in real life. To that end, God has always been willing to give me ample opportunity to rub up against truths; especially those to which I have some hard-headedness.

2. Some may attribute the opportunities to life lessons, or simple randomness; but God is behind them. They don't happen all the time, but when they do it is unmistakable. It's as if the normal cadence of my life is interrupted and a pattern of events tells a story; a story that has an author, a purpose, a perspective, and a particular point. For a minute, I am outside of my own life and someone else is using it to bring truth to life in a way that is specifically adapted for my own understanding.

3. Here is the thing that makes me immensely curious about other people's experiences. When God orchestrates these teachable moments in my life, He often bathes them in humor and irony. Not the "Dumb and Dumber" humor that exists for its own sake, but the "Dan in Real Life" humor that has direction and teaches. This has always taken me by surprise. I often walk away laughing and saying to myself "I got ya God." To this day though, it still surprises me that God has a sense of humor. Does God have a sense of humor in your life?

4. Will answer in part 2