Testing Reveals Your Heart...
God allows us to go through difficulties and hardships for a purpose. God led the children of Israel to wander through the wilderness for forty years in order to humble them and test them. When they refysed to obey Him and enter the Promised Land, the Israelites revealed that they did not really know Him. If they had, they would have had more faith. God spent the next 40 years testing the hearts of His people to see if they were prepared for His next assignment.
Testing reveals what is in your heart and produces a robust faith (James 1:3,12). God allowed His people to hunger so they could experience His provision and develop a deeper level of trust in Him. As the people walked with God they came to understand that their lives depended upon His Word. They learnt that God's Word was the most important thing they had. After depending on God for 40 years while living in the desert, the people listened when God spoke, and they believed. When they finally entered the Promised Land and waged war against their enemies, the Israelites knew that God's Word meant life or death. They were prepared to listen to Him, and as a result He led them to an astounding victory.
Is God presently testing you in some area of your life? What has His testing revealed? Have you become bitter toward God because of where He has led you? Or have you come to trust Him more as a result of what you have gone through?
"Experiencing God" - 10 March entry by Henry T Blackaby and Richard Blackaby. For online version, go to http://www.blackaby.org
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Expanding on Deuteronomy 8 -
"Deuteronomy 8
Do Not Forget the LORD
1 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 that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers. 2 Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. 3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers 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. 4 Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.
6 Observe the commands of the LORD your God, walking in his ways and revering him. 7 For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills; 8 a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; 9 a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.
10 When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. 11 Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 15 He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 16 He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you. 17 You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.
19 If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. 20 Like the nations the LORD destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the LORD your God."
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Okies...what do you guys think about this Chapter in Deuteronomy??
Reflecting on it, i realise that there was no way that the Israelites would have won the war if God had not allowed them to build that trust and faith over 40 years of hardship and dependence on God. They learnt that it is ONLY through God that they are able to survive. Imagine the older generation receiving the command to march around the wall of Jericho 7 times over 7 days and then let out a shout to bring down the wall. They would probably stood in disbelief and doubt and not been able to carry out God's command for them. You reckon???
Amazingly, the word here said that their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell even from travelling in those harsh weather and having to do a lot of hard labour everyday to even perform their daily tasks. Sometimes, we fail to see even the little things that God has blessed us with like strength to study and do assignments over night without sleeping and still be able to survive the next day. Or to be able to survive the weekend of caregroup, then meetings, follow up, set up, worship practise, sunday service, CDS, leaders' meeting, and still go home to finish up an assignment due the next day and get a 'D' for the assignment.
I learnt an important lesson today. For whatever circumstance God allows us to go through it is for our own good and I must remember to be humble and to "remember God" in all my circumstances and blessings and good times. So I am accepting and willing to let God carry me through this season of uncertainty and walking into the unknown for what He is preparing in my life. And I pray that I will not forget God even as I walk through times of blessings and comfort...going back to KL always places me in a zone of comfort...and I hope that I will not be sucked into the "good life" and forget the burden that God placed in my heart. Something awaits me on this next chapter. I don't know how or when or what...But He knows. But I just hope it won't take me 40 years to learn and know it! hehehehe!
Lord, let my heart and life be soft before you. Be the light upon my feet so that I can see my path and follow You. I know You will walk with me and go before me to prepare the way for me. May I humbly submit to your discipline and moulding in my life.
Amen...
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