Troubled? – Could it be testing from God?

After the Super Bowl victory, winning Coach Tony Dungy said, “The Lord doesn't always take you in a straight line. He tests you sometimes.”

Genesis 22: 1-2 (NIV) specifically states that God tested Abraham. “Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." Abraham did not skip the test and run. He did what God had told him to do. When God saw that Abraham was faithful, he spared Isaac and blessed Abraham as promised.

God allowed Satan to test Job and when Job proved faithful, God blessed him.

When is the trouble we face a testing from God? How do we know? How do we respond?

When the people of Israel did not follow God’s leading into the Promised Land, He tested them in the desert for forty years. Could it be that my lack of faith in one matter creates the need for God to bring me back to himself through further testing? When we fail to follow God, we are in a sense testing Him, something we are told not to do except for testing Him with the tithe (Malachi 3:10).

In Paul’s writings, he urged the Christians to test themselves as to their faith. James said that the testing of our faith develops perseverance.

God listens even when we question or accuse Him, as David did in Psalm 39:12-13 (NIV) "Hear my prayer, O LORD, listen to my cry for help; be not deaf to my weeping. For I dwell with you as an alien, a stranger, as all my fathers were. Look away from me, that I may rejoice again before I depart and am no more." It seems to me that our questioning of God, when done in an attempt to learn the source of our trouble, is part of the process of becoming what God intends us to be.