When It's Test Day
Life these day can be stressful, and occasionally my sweet dreams give way to nightmares. There are two I remember. One is some version of a chase dream, where I am pursued and am unable to run fast or far enough to escape. The other, tied actually to my school days, is of a math test where I am unprepared, arrive late, and flail and fail my way through the dream.
Tests breed sweat, invite anxiety, multiply worry and doubt.
Think back to the last math test you took. Unless you love numbers and equations, the test likely challenged much of your peace and left you staring at the page like it was written in Klingon. And, if you and I are alike, doomscrolling through the exam you were sure this spelled a bad outcome, leading to a career asking, “Do you want fries with that?”
Tim Keller, when talking about tests, says the best ones are designed to both “show and to grow” the test-taker. Some teachers love to administer tests only to show, to reveal, to humble the student as to all they do not know, while others use tests as steps toward growth. The showing of the deficits in understanding only set the stage for new growth and strength and a step up in mastering the material.
And it dawned on me that our God is a “show and grow” tester.
Testing, as a tool for growth in ways not even imagined, sits in God’s toolbox and is lifted out at the right times to reveal who we are and grow us in ways not attainable otherwise. But this is a hard truth.
I know no one who enjoys testing times
We tend to look for what we did wrong that God has brought this to us as punishment for some fault
It’s easy to question the goodness of God in the midst of testing times
Prayers for escape and relief punctuate every hour eclipsing much of the rest of our world.
But if we skim the Book from early Genesis through Revelation, testing as a tool can be seen over and over. Hidden in plain sight is the plan of our Instructor to use the hard edges of life to form and mold his children into people who resemble Jesus more each day.
A prime example of this is Abraham and his testing by God when asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac. When, after decades of waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promise to make him the father of many nations, Isaac is born and grows into a young man who Abraham adores. God, seemingly out the blue, directs Abraham to kill him as a sacrifice. It makes no sense. It sounds foolish and headed in exactly in the wrong direction, counter to the promise.
Why require this of him, to lose the son whom Abraham loves more than anything? How can a good God put this test before his man? Genesis 22 is difficult to read and escape the drama.
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.”
Again, tests show. Abraham had another son, Ishmael, but Isaac had his heart. He held onto this boy with all he had. After all, this was the son of the promise, and Abraham bet the farm on his future. In a sense, he had made this boy the center of his life, his god, and God’s test showed him his error.
This was a classic crossroads moment. Would Abraham hold onto what he had staked his hopes on standing right in front of him, or follow God’s direction?
The command seems to contradict the promise. And this same thing repeats itself throughout our life, too. Following Jesus is a hard choice when the best outcome of a matter that I really want and see in right front of me contradicts God’s instruction. It might be having sex that feels right but without commitment, shading a business deal for a promotion, slanting the truth so I look good to my friends, or any other place where what the Book teaches arcs across my chosen path. Everyday crossroads.
The rest of the Abraham story follows the man’s halting steps of faith in the midst of what he couldn’t understand or explain. The pair leave the servants and climb the mountain full of both questions and trembling trust.
*Spoiler Alert: Abraham will pass the test and his life trajectory moves upward from there on. This puts flesh on the declaration back in Genesis 15:6 that “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
As you read the story to its conclusion, Abraham’s faith shows through his fear when he answers Isaac’s question of where they were to get a lamb for the sacrifice when he tells the young man, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Abraham is growing right before the reader’s eyes. After doing all he could do, he fell into the arms of God and kept walking, kept trusting.
An interesting side note is that Mt. Moriah, where this took place, is the same place where Jesus will stand as sacrifice for all of us, in obedience to the Father even after pleading with God for reprieve. The ultimate crossroad.
God’s use of life-twists as tests are nothing like tests from the critical professor to only show error or deficits or wrong thinking, but are designed to grow a believer in new ways, reaching deeper into the person and into God. Your God can be trusted and that trust comes hard won, on the battlefield of the heart. He is the Professor who desires to use all of the curriculum to see the student become so much more than at the start of the course.
Life is your classroom and its events are the curriculum. The Spirit of God wastes nothing in it: Work, rest, pain, relationships, hobbies, community, sicknesses, children, money, travel, service, and every other corner of a person’s life are normal, daily chances for us to be shown and grown.
Maybe that’s why James writes such an odd (on the surface) line at the top of his letter.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
If you work these verses backwards, a divine logic emerges.
It is a good and worthy desire to be mature and complete as a person
That comes about through a life given to a long obedience in the same direction
Perseverance, or the ability to stay your course, comes as our faith grows strong through testing (both showing and growing)
So, as the bad times, the unexpected turns in life, the unexplainable and hard to imagine descend like fog, welcome those times as friends for what it will build in you…even as you pray and wor through and out of them.
The God of promise and hope and future stands also as the God who exposes and tests and guides to new maturities in life. Abraham faced the death of what looked to him like the fulfillment of a promise, but it led to life.
Will we, will I, really trust him and follow instructions that seem to lead to what looks like the death of our dream? Or will I conveniently ignore his direction and only slap a God-label on my plans without really trusting to follow? Lifestyle crossroads.
Probably like you, I’m a mixed bag with all this. I’d like to say testing times roll off me with ease, and sometimes they do. But many times I say “No thanks” to the instruction and move ahead with what looks or feels good to me, most often to my regret.
Two questions rise out of this for me to ask my Father when I face my next test:
What does this hard time, this test, show in me where I am lacking or off course in my thinking and behavior?
Where is one place I can grow in my character during these days and what steps can I take to go in that direction?
Let’s follow the leader and grow through our tests together.
Music for the week
Jokes? Sure.
A Pentecostal Christian was once invited by his friend to attend a staid Presbyterian church, where the services resembled a quiet library.
The Pentecostal man was used to exuberant services of his church, which resembled an enthusiastic crowd at a basketball game. When the Presbyterian pastor made a particularly inspiring point in his sermon, the Pentecostal man yelled out “Praise the Lord!”
This passion troubled the solemn Presbyterian congregants. When the high-spirited visitor continued to voice his agreement with compelling statements made from the pulpit by yelling out “A-men” and “Hallelujah”, the Clerk of the Session (like a deacon in less severe and more liturgical churches) came down the aisle and whispered to him, “You have to keep quiet! The pastor is in the middle of his sermon.”
The Pentecostal man responded, “Keep quiet? How can I do that? I’ve been given the Holy Spirit!”
The Clerk of the Session said, “Well, you didn’t get it in this church.”
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I was teaching my First Grade class to tell time using a conventional analog clock. "We'll be learning about the hour hand and the minute hand," I explained.
One of the students interrupted and said, "I don't need to learn on that kind of clock. My dad bought me this digital watch, and right now it's ten minutes to 38."