Testing God

Do you really dare!?  Dare to test God, that is?  

Hmmmm.

It's good to have faith in God but we need to balance our faith by not putting God to the test.  When people of the Bible tested God or His Holy Spirit there were dire consequences.

There is need to examine our faith...is it really faith or is it willfulness to persist in something in the name of faith?  Do we persist even when God sends many advisers and folks of wisdom into our path who would lead and guide us in a better direction?

This is where

"testing the spirits to see if they be of God" (1 John 4:1-3) 

or not, comes in.  This is definitely a subtle thing with our human minds, thoughts, hearts, and nature.  However God has given us the Holy Spirit to help lead and guide us.  We also have God's Word, the Bible, plus our brother's and sister's in Christ who have earthly knowledge and expertise in the area in which we are purportedly engaging our faith.  Seek Him and them out and be in prayer.

This brings us back to, is it true faith or has it been misguided?

Speakers often give the example of the guy sitting in his armchair in his living room whilst his house is burning down around him.  He's praying that God will come in and make the situation right.

We obviously shout at him, "GET OUT of the house!!"

But he blithely replies, "I have faith in God that He'll help me out of this situation without me being harmed."

God did not send a rainstorm or miraculously spirit the man out of the house.  The dire consequences of the man's misguided faith was to be burnt to death.  Foolishness.

A friend in Canada once quoted to me, "God helps those who help themselves".  Another saying, an Arabic one I believe, is, "Trust God and tie your camel."  God does His part but we must also do ours.  He's given us brains and earthly wisdom; we must use them wisely.   He'll partner with us if we'll partner with Him.  He is so gracious and kind.

In an area in which I once lived there was a well known story of a Christian lady who had breast cancer.  In the middle of one of her chemo sessions she pulled out the IV and declared herself miraculously healed by God.  This was well published about and boasted of in Christian circles, and I'm not sure of, in how many non-Christian circles.

She was not healed.  Her misguided faith killed her and left behind a heartbroken husband and two very young, then motherless, children.  Chemo treatments despite the aggressiveness of some of them, may well have bought her time to see those young children mature into the teen years and/or beyond.

God's reputation was besmirched and the Christians made to look like fools.  Can we spread the message of Jesus with the consequences of misguided faith in our listeners' minds?

God's Word is quick and powerful but we Christians will have to overcome the negativity towards us and Jesus and God due to the bumblings of fellow believers (and of our own selves).  Let us live wisely and not be one of the bumblers.

Again, God gives human beings good brains so that doctors can use their knowledge and experience to help heal and/or give "borrowed" time for our general good and benefit.  We balance these things with our prayers and faith in God that He will bring the best result for us when we act on the earthly wisdom He's allowed us to have.  We then can leave the results of the combined teamwork: faith in God plus our human action, to God.

God treats this as a very serious matter.  Look at His dealings with the children of Israel time and again.  (Read the Old Testament.)  He warned, 

"Do not test the Lord your God..." (Deuteronomy 6:16-18).  

Psalm 78:18-20 shows that they 

"willfully put God to the test by demanding the food they craved..."  

Another time they got themselves into trouble with snakes because of their grumbling.  1 Corinthians 10:9 reiterates, 

"We should not test the Lord as some of them did...and were killed by snakes...grumbling."  

Even grumbling was considered as "testing God"!

Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:9 were asked,  

"How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord?"  

How could they dare?!  

How could we?! 

Jesus is our ultimate perfect example of NOT putting God to the test.  In Luke 4:12 Jesus answered Satan, 

"It says (in the Old Testament):  "Do not put the Lord your God to the test..." 

 Jesus said this in His answer to Satan's asking Him to throw Himself down from the highest pinnacle of the temple.  Jesus did not kowtow to Satan one tiny little bit and neither should we.  Memorize and remember Deuteronomy 6:16 as your 'weapon' and shield against compromising your faith in a misguided manner.

Another small example from my own jungle trekking experience while helping with some charity work.  Minor surgery was done on several villagers.  One of the surgery sites began to bleed and bleed during a sharing session.  The speaker interrupted his talk and all prayed that the bleeding would stop.  It did.  But that also didn't stop us from calling the doctor to come and have a look.  The doc redressed the areas, restated the do's and don'ts of post op care and then left the results to God.  Action as well as prayer and reliance upon God our Healer.  He delights in our partnership.  I delight in His, for that matter.

Yes, we've all heard miraculous stories from the Bible times and also from our own time.  I do have faith in our God.  Think of the case of my husband and my own daughter Hannah.  She had leukemia.  We took her for treatment.  We prayed for healing.  We believed that God can and does heal.  But God had other plans.   Our faith did have action...we took her for treatment.  Yes, we were disappointed and maybe even angry that God didn't bring the desired healing but we had to leave those results up to Him knowing He was (and still is) working for our good.

Other times, God does heal as we ask but, again, we need to put feet to our faith.  And when in very deep rural areas of the world (are there still some of those left?---yes), far from human expertise, I believe that God does do more work "on His own" in His miraculous ways.   His human workers are, sadly, not yet available to 'help' Him so God is His own witness.  He loves, He cares.  He wants relationship even with those not yet modernized.

Those places where workers of medical or engineering, etc expertise are lacking or are only 'a few', the faith and prayer of those who do "GO," combined with those of those who "SEND" the workers, in alliance with God, may see God's mighty acts more readily in those more interior regions.  These act as a display of God's power over sickness and death and evil spirits for the people to be astounded and "arrested" by God to "bring many sons to glory".

So the mission worker prays.  The mission worker places his or her faith in God.  God does the work in the hearts.  BUT...But when His people of knowledge and skillfulness are present  God often lets them do the work.  Our faith must have action.

Act on the knowledge and wisdom given from the earthly experts and counselors God places in our lives.  Have faith that God will also do His part but whatever you do, 

"Do not put the Lord your God to the test." (Deut 6:16) 

 Let God get the glory through our properly guided faith evidenced in appropriate action.  Amen.

                                                               


 Working in tandem with God creates a beautiful picture.

                                                                                                                                            

                                                            ~ERC 2015~