Discovering God in Times of Testing

Can you imagine what the marble must have looked like
before Michelangelo began carving his "Pieta"?

There’s an adage we sometimes hear that we can learn more from failure than we do from success. We could offer a variety of possible reasons for this, but my experience and that of many people I know is that, whether we like it or not, it’s true.

Success might be the result of vision, hard work and determination. But it might also be a product of being in the right place at the right time, or happenstance. Causes for failure, however, are usually easier to identify: Poor judgment; bad planning; not working hard enough; unwillingness to persevere, quitting too soon; downright sinful wrongdoing. Those are just some of possible contributors to failure.

 

But there’s another one we don’t often consider: God might be allowing adversity in our lives because He has some lessons we need to learn. The Bible calls it “testing,” “tribulations” or “trials.” 

 

One of the earliest references in the Scriptures is Deuteronomy, after God had given to Moses His commandments and instructions for the people of Israel. Referring to the nomadic journey the Lord had taken them on after their escape from slavery in Egypt, Moses said, “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” (Deuteronomy 8:2).

 

If ever there were a stiff-necked people, it was the Israelites whom God had specifically and specially chosen to be His own people. He could have chosen many other people groups, but the people of Israel were those He ordained to be His for eternity. During their 40-year wanderings, they had rebelled against Him on numerous occasions. So, He kept them in the wilderness for four decades, not only to test what was in their hearts but also to shape their character for the future He had for them.

 

A number of New Testament passages speak to this as well. In James 1:3-4, the apostle exhorts his readers, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Verses later James adds, “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him” (James 1:12).

 

There’s a similar statement in the short book of 1 Peter. After opening his letter to readers he calls “God’s elect, strangers in the world…,” Peter encourages, “In this you greatly rejoice, though for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith – or greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus is revealed” (1 Peter 1:1,7).

 

We could cite many other passages, but it’s clear that what we often regard as failure, or mistakenly believe to be the result of sinful disobedience, might actually part of the refining process God uses to mold and shape us into the people He desires for us to be.

 

I can think of many times of testing in my life, times when I often wondered, ‘What did I do wrong?’ ‘Why is this happening?’ The benefits of the testing began when I shifted my questioning to ask, ‘What are you trying to teach me, Lord?’ 

 

There was the time when after leaving the newspaper business to join the staff of a Christian ministry, our house in our former city sat on the market for an entire year. All the while we struggled to meet mortgage payments on that house and the house we had bought, along with a bridge loan to buy the purchase of the new house in the interim. 

 

During that time, I dug deeply and diligently into the Scriptures, seeking to learn that “nugget” God was trying to teach me. I learned many things over that period, but the most important was this: The Lord telling me, “I am God, Bob, and you’re not!” He was eagerly working to break down my self-sufficiency and learn to trust Him, no matter the circumstances.

 

Since then, I and my family have dealt with testing in many forms. We felt fear at times, as well as anger, frustration, you name it. But God knew exactly what He was doing. And we’ve learned much as we’ve gone through the process.

 

Some sculptors, they say, work on a block of granite or marble simply chipping away at everything that does not look like the image they have formed in their mind’s eye. I imagine God doing the same with us, knowing how broken we all are, and slowly chipping away at our flaws, determined to transform us into the image of His Son. 

As 1 John 3:2 says, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” Wow! If that’s the outcome of God’s faithful and loving testing in our lives, I’m all for it. How about you?