TESTING FROM GOD
This video is one of condor parents prodding its young one to jump off a cliff so that it could fly. As heartless as it might seem, the act of pushing its young one is critical to get it to experience what flying and soaring through the sky is like.
God deals with man in a similar fashion. He tests man and disciplines him so that he would be better. As soon as the Israelites were delivered from the Egyptians, they ran into trouble with having no water in the desert for three days. And a litany of testing followed, with the predictable pattern of grumbling against God, Moses interceding for the people and deliverance that God granted. Once their wandering was done and they were ready to enter the Promised Land, God recapitulates the purpose of it all.
Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. (Deuteronomy 8:1-5)
Becoming a Christian often is accompanied by a desire to be materially blessed. While that might happen to begin with, trouble and testing inevitably follows. This wilderness experience might last for years as it did for the Israelites. The purpose of the testing is to humble, to refine and to teach. Humility is the greatest virtue man can have, as it is the very antithesis of pride that characterizes Satan. True humility can only be learned in a crucible of pain. Testing and suffering has a way of imprinting humility into the psyche of man. Any person who has an abundance of material possessions and accomplishments, becomes proud, and tends to forget that he is truly dependent on God.
When the Bible talks of testing, we should not assume it is one where we are given a pass/fail grade. Every believer in Christ has already passed from death to life and God won’t take his salvation away unless he rejects God. This testing rather is one where the impurities within him are removed by a process of refining, as gold is refined by fire. And so when man learns to depend on God through times of testing and trial, he will be able to praise God and stick to Him during times of abundance. Today, centuries later, the Israelites still remain a people who maintain their identity as a nation that belongs to God, and has been chosen by God.
Interestingly, God makes them hunger, and then feeds them with food they could not have produced. This is a pattern we see playing out in our lives all the time. There are needs in our lives, which we are unable to fulfill, and when we turn to God, we find the supernatural work of God, bringing to our lives what we could not create on our own. And when we go through that process, we learn to depend not on the food we ate, but the Lord who provides the food and all else.
Testing as a whole is essential to bring a person closer to God and complete the transformation process of becoming like Christ while we live our lives here on earth. God does make a promise that while we go through testing, he will sustain us and preserve us. Abundance is promised after deliverance, but has to be reached through the route of testing.
