Adjust your thinking if you are having doubt. Change your mindset. Do not give up. Discard negative thoughts about the struggles you have had over the past few months. It's only a test. It is not a season you are going through but a test. There is a difference.
A test is the span of time between two seasons. Tests are transitional phases wherein seasons are cyclical and subject to change only after a designated time.
You have called out to God in prayer and wonder if anybody's home. Nothing. Silence. Remember during an actual test in school, the teacher's always silent. The teacher is in the classroom with you and not only hears you but sees you, too. It is exactly the same with God. He hears and sees you but you are taking a test. Your challenge is to pass.
Everything you have read, been taught and have learned is being put before you in the form of your present circumstances. To help pass the test, you must have perfect recall or you could fail. Fail is used softly not harshly. God is always for us. We are more apt to see our shortcomings as failures, I believe, than He is.
Here are three things to provide comfort when going through a test:
1. God's Grace is sufficiency God will strengthen us through our affliction. Remember Paul with a problem so big, he referred to it as a thorn in the flesh? By the time God finished with him, he was boasting about hardships and welcoming them! (2 Corinthians 12:7-9)
2. God's timetable
God's timing is always right. A certain hour, day or week, He'll know enough is enough and your test will be over. Joseph's story is a perfect example. Joseph went from a pit, into slavery, to prison, into his own palace. (Genesis Chapters 37-45)
He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
3. God's purpose
There is a purpose for our tests. (Ecclesiastes 3:1)
We pray for more faith, wisdom, knowledge, patience, understanding etc. It's been often said we must be careful what we ask God for because His ways are not ours. If you ask for money, a check may or may not come in the mail but an idea will come to you. It could be to sell something on eBay that you no longer care to have.
There is an internal purpose. He is doing something on the inside of us to conform us into the image of His son. (Romans 8:29) The test is to change whatever is inside us that is not like the Christ. Different circumstances, tough times, for example, will reveal what is inside of us that needs to be changed. We may have professed to have faith and the test will make us exercise it, thus, strengthening us.
Our circumstances do not change us, they simply expose us. Tests are evidence that we belong to God and that He is with us. Do not be deceived by what is seen with your eyes. Keep the faith. Keep believing and through all things, give Him praise. It's only a test.
July 2009 by Avis Ward of GeoVi's Home for New Life
