Testing Your Faith
Everything in your life is going to hell in a hand basket. House problems, marriage problems, business problems, kid problems, mother-in-law problems, money problems, boss problems. “Maybe God is testing your faith,” says your friend.
Really?
So your loving Heavenly Father puts you on a personal version of “Survivor” to see if you’re really a Christian. To see how much you can take. God the “Faith Tester”. Or maybe He’s your “Personal Trainer God”. He’s putting you through your paces like a CrossFit instructor who’s had a bad argument at home. He’s working you out, over and over, to make your faith grow stronger.
A little weird.
When bad stuff happens, thousands of Christians (and non-Christians for that matter) believe God is ‘balancing the accounts’. The stuff you’ve done wrong . . . or bad . . . well, that’s coming back to get you now. Your ‘yin’ is balancing out your ‘yang’. After all, doesn’t the Bible say you’ll reap what you sew? God must be the “Enforcer God,” bringing justice to your life somehow based on your performance.
All this started with a verse in the book of James (chapter 1, verses 2 & 3) where He says:
“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”
James is talking about how to endure tough stuff and dangling the carrot of endurance (or patience) as the reward. Never blamed God for setting up the ‘tough stuff’. Peter picks up similar words in I Peter 1:7:
“In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;”
He’s pointing to the value of our enduring the tough stuff as a praise to God. That He gets glory when we persevere through Jesus. A benefit of having our faith tested and having Him bring us through is honor to our perfect Father, just like the father of a winning triathlete would get glory from the perseverance of his son. But the value of these tests accrues to us. Ourselves.
Read what Paul had to say about it . . .
“Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you– unless indeed you fail the test?” -II Corinthians 13:5
We can mouth the words and talk about trusting Him when everything is peachy, but when it really gets hard, we’re the first ones to know if our faith is real . . . or not. If we abandon our faith, throw God under the bus and disavow Him, we pretty well know it wasn’t real to start with. We can doubt God, be angry at God, question His love for us . . . all very natural responses to disasters. But the more you cling to Him vs. question Him, the stronger your faith is. And you’re the one who knows that in your heart.
Question: Will you reframe your thinking about ‘testing your faith’? Tell us here.
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Responses (2)
The trials of our faith in how they would lead us to give glory to God is by Him enabling us to trust the Lord even through difficult times that otherwise, we would not, nor could not, see ourselves go through even with Him.
Mark 9:23 Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. 24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
Peter walking on the water of the sea in going out to Jesus from the boat in the midst of the storm where the waves of the storm took his eyes off of Jesus causing Peter to sink is a prime example of how our reliance is on the Lord all the time in stead of any confidence in ourselves in trusting Him.
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak therefore what is impossible with man, is possible with God shows why we would glorify God for the faith He has given us to place in Him as He really is keeping us from falling.
Since one of the fruits of the Spirit is faith, God is able to increase our faith when we seem to be lacking. Truly, He deserves our praise & thanksgiving as we are the works of His hands.
Psalm 100: 3 Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Psalm 118:8 It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.
Jude 1:24 Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, 25 To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.
Great Scriptures to remember Scott. Knowing He’s there with you in person is even better than the Book!